On Shifting Tenses
by Kerowyn
Summary: I do not know if Russell ever intended it to be read by any but herself... A chemistry accident sends Russell back in time thirty years. What will she do when confronted with the man who will be her husband? Set between MREG and LETT
1. Prologue

**On Shifting Tenses**

The time is out of joint: O cursèd spite,  
That ever I was born to set it right!

_Hamlet_, Act I, Scene V

When I first received the battered trunk containing, among other things, the manuscripts of Mary Russell Holmes, I was inclined to consider the whole thing as some elaborate prank. A bizarre collection of odds and ends filled the trunk to the brim, most notably a valuable emerald necklace wrapped in a silk scarf and a pile of papers full of stories so strange that they had to be true.

Many of the objects in the trunk were directly mentioned or alluded to in Miss Russell's stories, such as a carved ivory chopstick and a delicate robe made of Kashmiri wool, but apart from a cursory examination when the trunk first arrived I paid them little attention. After all, I am a writer first, and the yellowing pages held far more attraction for me than a yellowing ivory brooch.

However, I did occasionally make the trip up the rickety stairs into the attic where the trunk, _sans_ manuscripts, was stored in order to sift through the contents in the hopes that its origins and the reasons behind its arrival would be revealed. I usually gained little from these trips besides dust in my hair and perhaps a bruise on my shin from a box which had mysteriously shifted position.

I would have never found this story if not for those trips. I was digging for jewelled box which I had seen before, swearing that I would make an inventory one of these days when I came up with a pretentiously gaudy silver picture frame that looked as if it belonged in a Victorian parlour. The frame had always puzzled me, since it seemed to be at odds with the Russell I knew from her memoirs. I thought it might have been a gift from a casual friend or distant relative, and it amused me to think of Russell and Holmes' wedding photo in that incongruous frame.

I abandoned my search for the box and sat back on my heels to examine the thing. There was no picture in the frame now and as I looked I realized that the frame seemed rather thick. As I was contemplating this, I overbalanced and fell backwards with a curse, flinging the frame over my head. I cursed again, with greater heat, and went to retrieve the frame. Luckily the heavy wrought silver suffered no damage, but when I picked it up from the corner in which it had fallen part of the backing fell away.

There were two backings to the frame, an outer one to which the stand was attached and an inner one pressed against the glass. Sandwiched between the two was a sheaf of papers. I sat on the attic floor and read straight through, my heart pounding as I did so. A few of the pages were clearly torn from a notebook. They appeared to be covered in chemical notations. Time and mildew had damaged a portion of the notes, so that the professor I took them to could make neither heads nor tails of them. He would only say that it likely described an early electrical experiment.

But it was the manuscript which engrossed me. Not many years ago I would have dismissed it as a not entirely successful attempt at fiction. But to write fiction in the style of her memoirs was so entirely unlike Miss Russell that it seemed impossible, although knowing my subject perhaps I should not use that word. I could think of various things to explain this matter of fact description of fantastic events, everything from hallucination to allegory, but in the end I found myself thinking that the simplest solution really was correct. It was too strange not to be true.

It is with some reluctance that I send this tale out into the world. I do not know if Russell ever intended it to be read by any but herself. But, for good or ill, I feel that it is my duty as an editor to let the story stand on its own.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

I'm baaaaack! Wheee!

Obligatory Disclaimer: I'm sure it doesn't need to be mentioned, but I don't have the rights to Mary Russell. She belongs to Ms. Laurie R. King. Holmes, of course, belongs to Russell.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	2. On Disappearing Professors

_**Chapter One**_

_**On Disappearing Professors**_

I had intended to spend the afternoon in splendid isolation among the stacks of the Bodleian. I had cleared my schedule of all responsibilities and even informed my friends and landlady I would be out of town for the day. I spent the night before in a state of mild anxiety, sure that Damocles' sword would descend and bring a telegram from Holmes dragging me into the dark streets of London or, more probably, some foreign land far from my books.

When sunrise brought neither telegram nor husband, I set out with enthusiasm, only to have all my plans come to naught when I was intercepted by Miss Lily Stephens, an undergraduate from my college, five steps from the Bodleian doors.

"Oh, Mary, you've got to come see this." Lily latched onto my arm and dragged me away without breaking her stride. "You won't believe it. It's incredible."

I dug my heels in and said, "Would you mind explaining first?"

Lily adjusted her coat, which was sliding off one shoulder, and ran a hand through her perpetually untidy blonde hair. "The professor's gone." She gasped, winded from running. "They say he blew himself up!"

"What? Who?" I cried, momentarily taken aback

"Professor Jensen! They're all saying that an experiment went wrong and he blew himself up!"

I thought for a moment. I had barely a passing acquaintance with Professor Jensen. Though brilliant in his field, Professor Jensen had no great aptitude for teaching or for the world outside the rarefied air of Oxford academia, and therefore taught only introductory classes in order to justify his salary. I had managed to absorb a startling amount of chemistry from Holmes before I entered the University and I often skipped his class for more useful (to my mind, anyway) activities.

However, since I had heard no explosions or police sirens that morning, I thought I might go see for myself. Lily's assessment turned out to be excessively melodramatic, but what actually happened proved to be far more fantastic.

When we arrived at the Chemistry building, a small crowd had begun to gather, attracted like moths to a flame by the presence of the police vehicles. It was growing by the minute as more passers-by stopped to see what everyone else was looking at.

"Perhaps we should try another route." I said to Lily when I saw the crowd and we circled around to the side entrance.

There was a police constable standing in the hall, ensuring that no one could trespass on the scene. I strode directly up to him, trying to think of a subterfuge that would get him to let us pass. Judging from the granite look on his face, I did not think it would be easy.

Luck, however, was on my side, for at that moment Inspector Lestrade exited the side room, talking with another officer. He caught sight of me and hailed.

"It is Mrs. Holmes, isn't it? Let her through, Jimmy." The constable stepped aside reluctantly.

"You know the chap, then?" He asked, looking askance at Lily. She gaped in amazement at my connections among the higher echelons of law enforcement.

"He was an old professor of mine. Has he really disappeared?"

"Seems like it. He's only been missing since last night. Normally we would wait a bit longer before initiating a missing person investigation, but we have some unusual circumstances."

"Unusual circumstances indeed." I agreed. Professor Jensen's lab was one of many crammed into the building with more of an eye toward immediate use than long-term planning. Even tenured professors were restricted to lab space that was hardly bigger than a small office. No doubt the growing crowd outside contained a dozen or so scholars, incensed at being denied access to their labs.

The first thing I saw on entering the lab was the scorch mark. They formed a thin line encircling the entire room, as if someone had drawn them with a pencil. The source of the blast was immediately apparent. The shattered remains of a beaker lay in a small pile on the table underneath a ring stand. The flame of the Bunsen burner was still lit.

"Did you move anything?" I asked. Lestrade barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

"Of course not, and neither have any of my men."

"What did happen here?" I asked, examining the scorching. Lestrade flipped open his notebook and began to recite.

"Last anyone saw of Professor Jansen, he was in this lab, finishing an experiment. None of his students or his assistants know anything about it. Apparently he was very private about that sort of thing."

"He lost a fellowship once to a lab partner who stole his notes." Lily volunteered. I glanced around at her, a bit surprised. Lestrade was not only surprised, but he peered at Lily with deep suspicion.

"It's made him a bit paranoid." She added hesitantly. Lestrade jotted down a note and continued.

"One of his assistants bid him good night on the way out and locked up the rest of the building. When the assistant returned in the morning she found the lights still on and the door locked. The only people with a key are Professor Jansen and another professor who is at Edinburgh for a conference of some sort. The assistant attempted to rouse the professor and getting no response and fearing for his health, she called for help in forcing the door. A few male students answered and the door was forced. Upon finding the room empty, they called the police and naturally the case found its way to me. And damned if I know where he went."

"And you've checked his home, I suppose?" I asked.

"His wife said he hadn't come home last night and that we should check at his lab. According to her, he disappeared into thin air."

"I think that's rather unlikely." I said drily, and Lestrade made a noise halfway between a grunt and a chuckle.

"I'd like to know what caused this scorching, though." I said. It looked like a simple burn, with a similar colour and appearance to burns found in labs where the chemists are careless with the Bunsen burners. But the placement was too regular for it to be caused by a normal explosion and there were no void marks from where a person might be standing, indicating that the room was empty when the scorching occurred. Admittedly, the laboratory only slightly larger than a smallish bedroom, but it still must have been quite a lot of smoke to send soot all around the room. Aside from the scorching, it seemed that nothing had been disturbed.

"It does look rather odd, but I expect it was caused when the beaker exploded. The burn mark is on about the same level as the Bunsen burner."

"But if there was an explosion there would be glass fragments all over the room." I argued. "If the Professor left the flame on, he was probably intending to come back. So why lock the door behind him?"

"It's possible that he simply forgot about the gas being on." Lestrade offered. "Really, we're only here because the wife was so insistent and the local constables thought a missing persons case would be better handled by the Yard."

"Hmm." I had picked up the professor's notebook and was leafing through the last few pages. They were covered with formulas and equations. I could make no immediate sense of it, but lab notes are rarely as neat as one would wish. "I think you're right. I would send a man around to the hospitals, just in case."

"Thank you very much, Miss Russell. I am ever so glad to have your approval on this case."

"No problem at all, Inspector." My grin matched his. "Do you mind if I hold on to the professor's notebook? For safekeeping."

Lestrade threw up his hands. "Can't see as it will make any difference. You'll let us know if you find a note saying where he went?"

I promised that I would, and Lestrade rounded up his men, leaving the laboratory in peace. I shooed Lily off to class over her protests that she could help me search for the professor. I was tempted to remain in the laboratory myself, searching for some clue, but I could hear the Bod calling to me. I shut the notebook firmly, wedged it into my own bag between a treatise on recent archaeological discoveries in the Holy Land and a book on religious conflict in Spain, and set off in search of my manuscripts.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	3. On Sudden Reactions

**Chapter Two**

**On Sudden Reactions**

According to his notes, Professor Jansen was attempting to synthesize a compound with properties similar to tungsten. His goal appeared to be a more efficient type of electric light bulb. Tungsten tended to be a rather temperamental substance to work with, which made the production of light bulb rather complicated. Earlier portions of the notebook were filled with chemical and mathematical equations and write-ups of several failed compounds. So far his attempts had either been too expensive to be feasible or outright failures.

The last pages concerned observations of his final experiment. The process was simple, combine the chemicals and heat the mixture until the chemical bonds reformed, creating a new compound. The results of the experiment were not recorded, so the professor must have left, by whatever means, before the reaction was completed.

I was curious to see the results myself. I confess I was not terribly worried about the professor's whereabouts. I agreed with good inspector's assertion; no doubt that Jansen would wash up on the shores of some pub or in the casualty ward.

But my curiosity had driven me back to the chemistry laboratories. My curiosity wasn't strong enough to induce me to skip supper, though, and between one thing and another I didn't get back to the laboratory until the sun was sinking below the horizon. The police had long since left, taking their crime scene tape with them, so I set up the experiment in Jensen's lab where I wouldn't get in anyone's way.

The concoction required careful temperature control, so that the liquid wouldn't crystallize too quickly and fracture or boil off, so I was stuck in the room, making minute adjustments to the flame of the Bunsen burner and scribbling theological ramblings on loose leaf paper. Therefore I very nearly missed the all-important moment of crystallization.

The orange glow cast over my notes by the flame suddenly increased in intensity. I automatically reached out to turn down the flame and noticed that the liquid in the beaker was becoming solid. I instantly snapped off the flame and realized that the glow was coming from the crystal itself. It increased in intensity and burned blindingly white, like a magnesium flare, but strangely gave off no heat.

I stood transfixed, like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a car, wondering what these strange new lights could be, but I could not look away. The light washed away the walls, windows and the work bench; and I thought that Professor Jansen had found his replacement for tungsten.

When I regained consciousness on the floor of the laboratory, I thought that perhaps the formula could use some work. I remained there for a minute or so, waiting for the purple spots in front of my eyes to fade and collecting my thoughts.

I wondered if the Professor had encountered the same sudden and dramatic release of energy. I wondered if it would be possible to stabilize the reaction and keep the chemical from turning into a supernova. I wondered what had happened to the light fixture.

I gazed up at the unlit fixture for several moments, trying to figure out what about it had struck me as being subtly off. I got carefully to my feet, checking for damage. It seemed that other than a few bruises from when I hit the floor, I was unscathed. I moved carefully over to the light switch and found it missing. Baffled, I tried the other side of the door, but there was no switch there either. The electric lights had disappeared. The fixture was gas.

I stared at it for a moment, then took myself outside for some fresh air. The corridor was dark, but I found my way outside just in time to see a hansom cab rattle past. I perched on the steps, wondering if the blast had knocked me silly.

I stared across the Oxford courtyard but no answers were forthcoming. The courtyard deserted, despite the relatively early hour. My watch said that it was just after eight, so I had not been unconscious very long, which was a small comfort. I watched as a small figure passed along the street, pausing to light the gas flares which lined the roadway. The night filled with a soft orange glow, the lamplighter disappeared round the corner and I took myself back inside.

The light fixture was still gas, the Bunsen burner was gone and there were two thin scorch lines encircling the walls of the room.

I had learned my lessons at the side of the world's foremost expert on deductive reasoning. I liked to think that I had learned my lessons well. But I was not at all sure about the conclusions the available evidence was leading me to.

Holmes was fond of saying that when faced the impossible, one must look to the simply improbable. But if it were impossible that I had been transported back in time several decades, what on earth could the improbable be?

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Now I know there are people out there who ask for constructive criticism, then freak out when you suggest using a spellcheck. I am not one of these people. I mean it when I ask for criticism, even if it is of the "dude, your story sucks" variety. Although if you think it sucks you could tell me why. That being said…

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	4. On Unlikely Alliances

_**Chapter Three**_

_**On Unlikely Alliances**_

I was stretched out on the prison bunk with my eyes closed, listening to the measured tread of officers and the scurrying of clerks on the floor above and trying desperately to remain calm.

I had tried to gain access to my rooms at Oxford last night, only to find that they were not longer my rooms. Or, if I was indeed in the time I thought I was in, they were not yet my rooms. The porter had given me an extremely suspicious look when I told him that I lived there and, after a disbelieving glance at my trousers, informed in soothing tones that he knew all the residents of this particular college on sight, so I must be mistaken. He added in less-friendly terms that he could call a constable to escort the young sir somewhere to have a nice lie-down. I demurred, claiming only to have become mildly lost and I could get myself home from here.

I set out down the street toward the train station without given a conscious thought to my direction. I badly wanted to run, although my more sensible half kept my pace to a quick walk. In any case, there was nothing to run from, and nowhere to run to. I came to the conclusion that this must either be a dream or a hallucination, ignoring the niggling little voice inside my head commenting that hallucinations tend to be rather more hallucinatory. They don't usually include newspaper litter and the organic residue of a hansom cab's passing.

I spent the night in the Oxford train station in the company of late night travellers, dozing on a wooden bench. It was difficult to perch on a workbench stool in a skirt, so I had changed into trousers, with my long blonde hair tucked underneath a cap. Masculine fashion had changed little over the years. The few women in the station were wearing the impossibly constricting dresses fashionable thirty years ago, and for the first time I found myself sympathizing with the cross-dressing Irene Norton _née_ Adler.

It should be noted that I considered Holmes' past relationship with The Woman as just that, very firmly in the past. Admittedly, my position was a little biased, but I couldn't help but wonder what had caused her to treat Holmes as she had. But I couldn't blame her for wanting to escape the confines of the feminine role society had given her.

Adler aside, my masculine dress protected me from unwanted questions from the station employees, who saw only an exhausted traveller waiting for his train. Though the last train to London had already left, the Oxford station was busy all night long, with trains coming in as late as one in the morning and leaving as early as four o'clock. The first train to London left at five in the morning.

I had no money with me, so I smuggled myself aboard while the conductor was looking the other direction and avoided the ticket-taker by spending most of the journey in the WC. I was awake, yet I felt like I was dreaming, my body propelling itself towards Sussex with no conscious input from my brain. It was a curiously detached feeling.

By the time the train pulled into Victoria Station the morning rush was well underway. I moved in a daze, ignoring the jostling commuters and aiming for the southbound trains.

The Sussex train was puffing gently at platform five. This time I did not bother to check for watchers. I felt sure that no one would notice one more sleep-deprived commuter in the vast herd. I had my foot on the step and was preparing to hoist myself on board when a huge meaty hand came down on my shoulder.

"Do you have your ticket, sir?"

Of course I did not. If I had been more awake or less disoriented I might have talked my way out of it, but the conductor evidently found something suspicious in my behaviour, because he instantly summoned the station's constables. I could give no coherent account of myself and the constables, deciding that I was either drunk or drugged, took me in.

I should have anticipated the problems involved in being arrested, but I still felt as if I was sleepwalking. I might have saved the booking sergeant a world of embarrassment if I had told him I was a woman straight off, but I did not think of it until he began to frisk me for weapons, and by then it was far too late.

A police matron was fetched and the search resumed, but with a bit more tenderness than before. The police doctor was also called in and I was given a cursory examination (which consisted of taking my pulse and examining my pupils) and given a clean bill of health. I was given a plain brown skirt for modesty's sake and ushered into a cell that already contained two women of dubious virtue.

I must have looked terrible. The women, a girl far too young for the hard look in her eyes and a grizzled specimen with only half of her teeth left, sat me down on the room's only cot and forced a mug of stale water dipped from a bucket in the corner of the cell into my hand.

"What 'appened to you?" The girl asked flatly, and I shivered. I could have named any number of sins and this girl would not be surprised.

"I'd rather not talk about it." I said truthfully. The girl shrugged and let it go. The older woman nodded sagely and jumped to her own conclusions.

"Dun't worry yer 'ead about 'him, gel." She said, her thick Cockney accent made even more incomprehensible by her missing teeth. "It'll all turn out right in the end."

I could have laughed; I could have cried, but in the end I did neither. I looked over to the girl, who had seated herself with her back to the wall. She shrugged and rolled her eyes.

They were an odd pair, the cynical girl and the optimistic elder. I wondered if they had met before, or if their easy camaraderie stemmed from being members of the same profession.

We didn't speak, and frankly I wouldn't have known what to say. The constable came by perhaps an hour after my arrival to release the other two women, with a half-hearted admonition to mend their ways. The woman flirted with the constable all the way down the hall, and the girl shot me a curious look as she left.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	5. On Second Meetings and First Impressions

**Chapter Four**

**On Second Meetings and First Impressions**

I was more exhausted that I could ever remember and I wondered vaguely if maybe this was a side effect of time travel. All my senses seemed preternaturally sensitive; I could hear the tread and muffled voices of the policemen upstairs, feel every splinter digging into my back. There was a dull, throbbing pain in my right shoulder, always a source of problems due to the injuries sustained in the car accident and later gunshot wound. A small barred window set high on the wall let in a small bit of diffuse light, creating unreal patterns of light and shade.

Time travel. It seemed impossible. It _was_ impossible. But it had happened nonetheless. The evidence was everywhere, in the clothing, in the train system, in Oxford. Though it was nearing the end of the summer term in Oxford when I started my recreation of Professor Jensen's experiment, it seemed to be spring now, with the first buds just showing on the trees and tulips blooming in the gardens. I didn't have an exact date, but judging from the clothing, I could estimate I was at least twenty years in the past.

It was logical to think that the same thing had happened to Professor Jensen. I wondered where he had wandered to and what had happened to him. I didn't know Jensen well, but he had struck me as a man with a shaky gasp on the realities of life outside academia.

I'm not sure how long I was in that holding cell. I may have dozed off at some point. The bunk was merely a wooden platform bolted to the wall, but I was far too tired to care. It was around noon when I was jerked back to awareness by the sound of the door down the hall being unlocked.

I heard them coming all the way down the hall. My hearing has always been particularly acute, perhaps as compensation for being nearly blind without my specs. The acoustics of the gaol cell helped as well. Stone walls echoed and amplified the conversation of the guards at the end of the hall, and before the morning was over I had heard more than I ever wanted to know regarding the state of their respective love lives.

"Glad you could make it. We've got a case that might interest you." The first voice said, in the unmistakeable tones of a police officer giving a report. "She flat out refuses to give an account of herself and frankly speaking, she seems more than a bit confused. I thought perhaps a knock on the head, but the doctor has given her a clean bill of health."

The other man asked something, but his voice was too quiet for me to catch the actual words.

"Name is Mary Russell and she's about twenty years old. She had a notebook with her when she was taken into custody. It looks like chemistry, so you might want to have a look. Beyond that she refuses to speak."

_Ah_. I thought. Perhaps they had finally decided whether to charge me or let me go. I sat up, automatically adjusting my hairpins. I had removed my glasses in an attempt to get some sleep, so I extracted them from my shirt pocket and threaded them over my ears.

Fuzzy shapes and blobs of colour resolved into two men. The one with the keys was a plain-clothes detective I had not seen before. I transferred my gaze to the second visitor.

Holmes. Thirty years younger and looking politely bored. His mouth was moving, but a roaring sound filled my ears. The cell swam out of focus. The world gave a sickening lurch and the floor came rushing up to meet me.

Holmes moved quickly, catching me before I could hit the floor. I felt as if I was struggling up out of a well of darkness. My vision refused to behave, but I could feel the heat of his body, smell the rich, familiar odours of tobacco and aftershave. I vaguely heard someone call for brandy. I thought it might be Holmes, but his voice sounded distorted, as if I was hearing from underwater.

I felt arms around me, lifting me back onto the bunk. A glass was put to my lips and I reeled backward, coughing as a truly poisonous variety of brandy hit my tongue. The room stopped spinning and my vision settled, but it left in its wake the beginnings of a truly vicious headache.

"Do not be alarmed Miss Russell." Holmes said in quiet, reassuring tones. "I am here to help."

"I'm fine." I whispered, contrary to all evidence.

"You are anything but fine, dear lady. You are one step away from a nervous collapse. When did you eat last?" Holmes could be extremely good with people when he exerted himself. I smiled shakily.

"Luncheon yesterday." Spent happily arguing over _hapax legomena_ with a pair of professors and another theology student. "I assure you I am not prone to fits of hysteria, Mr. Holmes."

"Lestrade," Holmes said to the other man, "fetch the lady something from the canteen." Somehow, I was not surprised. I had been on the receiving end of so many shocks during the past twenty four hours that this one hardly registered. Lestrade turned to a younger constable hovering just outside the door; presumably he had brought the brandy.

"Perhaps you would care to explain how you came to be in Victoria Station wearing masculine clothes and without a penny to your name." Holmes asked. He moved back a bit once it was apparent I could sit upright without assistance. I tried to shake off the odd mixture of relief and disappointment.

"I needed to go to Sussex, but I had no money. It seemed to be a logical decision." I shrugged, fully aware of the inadequacy of the explanation, but my brain was too muzzy to think up something better.

"What is in Sussex?"

"I don't know."

"Come now, madam!"

"I just felt that I had to be in Sussex. I don't really understand it myself." It was the truth too. "Believe me; I'd like to know what is going on just as much as you."

"What do you remember?" Holmes asked.

"I remember Oxford. I'm not sure what I was doing there. I walked down to the train station and took the first train to London and was accosted by the constables when I tried to get on the Sussex train. That's it really."

"You stowed away on the Oxford train I presume, since you have no money."

"Needs must, Mr. Holmes." I replied with equanimity. Holmes frowned. "Perhaps you can tell me who I am?"

It was less a question than a challenge, and Holmes rose to the occasion.

"Mary Russell, originally from the western coast of America, though you have been in England long enough to lose most of your accent. Judging from the cut and quality of your blouse you come from a family wealthy and eccentric enough to clothe their daughters in masculine attire. You are left handed, obviously, and have sustained a recent injury to your right shoulder. I note you wear a wedding band on your right hand; may I inquire after your husband?"

I dropped my gaze to the gold band, not trusting myself to speak.

"He…He's gone." I said finally, unable to articulate it in any other way. Let Holmes assume that my husband had abandoned me, or I him. He pressed his lips to together; I could almost see his thoughts linking an absent husband with a recent injury.

"You are Jewish and you write in Hebrew, and I assume you speak the language as well. This, coupled with your origins in Oxford lead me to believe that you are employed at the university in some capacity, perhaps as a secretary?"

I nearly said something sarcastic, but remembered the time period. Women were not yet admitted to degrees at Oxford.

"Ah." Holmes said softly, and took my right hand in his. I froze, torn between the desire to snatch my hand back and the desire to throw myself into his arms. But he turned my wrist so that my palm was facing up and examined the cuff of my sleeve. "I see you write Greek as well. The _eleison_ has made an indelible mark on your sleeve. And you were in a chemistry lab recently."

He brought my hand closer to his face for perusal of the ink and potassium thiocyanate stains on the sleeve. He seemed to be unaware of the effect his physical proximity was having on me, but Lestrade noticed my discomfort.

"Mr. Holmes, unless you can tell us her address from the state of her cuffs, I think we needn't trouble the lady any more."

"Hmm? Alas, my skills do not extend that far, Lestrade." Holmes said, letting go of my hand. "Will you be charging her?"

"I think not. Not much of a charge in any case."

"Very well." Holmes fished a card out of his pocket. "If you would care to drop by Baker Street later today, perhaps I may be of some assistance."

My lunch arrived from the police canteen moments after Holmes and Lestrade left. It was an unappetizing version of a Cornish pasty, but it was food and the coffee that came with it helped enormously. By the end of the meal I felt nearly human again.

As Lestrade said, they had little to hold me on. I was released on my own recognisance within the hour. I kept enough wits about me to lose the PC sent to dog my footsteps after I was released from the Yard's gaol, though in truth it was not hard to do. I simply had to duck around a corner and double back behind my pursuer. The PC gave up searching the crowds rather quickly, and I headed straight back to Victoria.

I truly did not know what force propelled me so inexorably toward Sussex. My mind was slowly beginning to comprehend the situation, but my body seemed to have a will of its own. I knew there would be no Holmes, no Mrs. Hudson, not even Patrick or Old Will. Yet I had to go.

I did not make the same mistake of boarding the train early. Instead I waited until the last moments before the train left, hopping on board with last rush of frantic passengers. I repeated the tactics that I used on the Oxford train and kept moving ahead of the conductor checking tickets, and spent half the journey locked in the WC, thinking wistfully of the benches in third class.

On arriving at Sussex I walked straight through the village without stopping, and automatically turned down the road leading to my mother's family home.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Thanks to those who have reviewed so far. I hate to wax self-aggrandizing in the author's notes, so I'll try to address comments in the review box, unless everyone says something like "dude, you forgot to capitalize this!" or something.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	6. On Late Night Conversations

**Chapter Five**

**On Late Night Conversations**

I stood outside the farmstead I knew so well. The windows were dark and the hearth was cold. A faint echo of memory, in my mother's voice, told me that my mother's family had spent this year in Boston. A half-formed idea of somehow warning her of a disaster twenty years in the future faded into the foggy night.

I turned away from the darkened house and set my face across the downs. My feet knew the path well enough to walk it automatically, but that was in 1920. Time had changed the boundaries of the fields, placing fences and walls where there were none before. But I knew my destination, like a migrating swallow returning to her roost.

I knew what to expect now, but it did not make the blow any easier to take. Our home, Holmes' and mine, was silent. The windows were boarded up and the front door was locked and barred. The hives were silent.

I forced open the kitchen door, which was merely latched shut, and tread carefully through the kitchen. It was filled with the strange nameless dread which pervades those places that are at once familiar and strange. The furniture was sparse, probably left behind by the last family to inhabit the place as being too old, cumbersome or ugly to move. Only the upstairs guest room showed signs of recent inhabitation. The bed had been slept in and there was a small suitcase stowed under the bed.

I returned to the kitchen and sat down gingerly, half-afraid the chair would disappear the moment I touched it. What on earth was I going to do now?

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

I don't know how long I sat there. Time didn't seem to be moving at all. Something flitted across the corner of my vision and I stood quickly, knocking over the chair. The crash echoed through the house.

"Holmes?" I called, unable to keep a slight tremor out of my voice.

"How the devil did you know it was me?" He replied sourly. He moved into the doorway where I could see him properly in the dim light afforded by the half-moon. It was not the Holmes I knew, but the younger Holmes I had been confronted with this morning.

I hadn't known. I had merely hoped, with every fibre of my being, that it was my husband creeping around outside; that this was the kitchen where Mrs. Hudson had attempted to teach me to cook; that it had all been some sort of bizarre nightmare from which I had finally awoken.

"I very much doubt anyone else would follow me down from London and across the Downs at this time of night."

"You are incorrect in your assumption, Miss Russell."

"I am?" I said, slipping easily into sarcasm, an almost automatic response to Holmes' acerbic nature.

"I did not follow you across the Downs. I was, however, intensely surprised to find you breaking and entering into a property which I have recently purchased. And I am no great believer in coincidence."

"Neither am I. What about London?" I asked, noting what Holmes failed to mention.

"Ah, London. When I heard you had effected your escape from the Yard I realized the natural action for you to take would be to continue on your quest to reach Sussex. Once a woman decides a course of action, it is next to impossible to sway her from it."

The easy chauvinism in his voice grated on my already raw nerves. My husband had said nearly the same thing on more than one occasion, but with amusement which turned it into a compliment rather than an insult.

"And men are so impulsive." I said sharply. Despite the poor light, I could see Holmes was startled by my retort. He did not reply, but went over to one of the kitchen drawers, and after a moment of rummaging, pulled out a candle and a book of matches. The small flame did little to dispel the darkness, but now we could see enough to aim our barbed comments properly.

"You are lying, madam. It is madam, isn't it? You wear your wedding band on your right hand, contrary to established custom. You wish, for some reason, to be mistaken for an unmarried woman. Why is that?"

"I have always gone by Miss Russell." I said, sidestepping the question.

"You are neither as helpless nor witless as you appear to be."

"Oh, thank you."

"I do not believe this farce of amnesia."

"You wouldn't believe the truth either."

"Perhaps you should let me judge." I did not know what to say to that. I didn't dare tell the truth; it would only get me committed. And despite the truly bizarre twist my week was taking, I was sure of my sanity, having once before gone over the edge and returned.

"Let me think about this." I turned and walked out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. I heard a brief murmur of disbelief behind me, but Holmes made no move to stop me.

The large windows which graced the southern side of the house remained intact, although they had been mostly boarded over. There was a gap between two of the sheets of plywood and I laid my head against it, looking out over the familiar meadows rolling down toward the cliffs. It didn't take long to come to a conclusion, but deciding how to phrase it was another matter.

I returned to the kitchen to find a simple meal of bread and cheese had been laid out on the scrubbed wood. I stared in disbelief before I remembered that Holmes was still Holmes, no matter what year it was, and perfectly capable of producing a five course meal out of the wilderness.

I was suddenly very hungry and was startled to realize it had been at least eight hours since my last meal. I helped myself and we ate in silence. I was trying to organize my thoughts; God only knows what Holmes was thinking.

"I shall tell you the truth, on one condition." I said after we'd finished.

"Name it."

"You promise not to hand me over to a lunatic asylum once I've told you." This provision startled him and he didn't answer right away. But I knew him well enough to predict the answer.

"Very well. The truth, then."

"About two days ago, one of my old chemistry tutors disappeared without a trace while working on an experiment. I attempted to repeat the experiment and I suspect that I got the same results as my professor. There was…an explosion of some sort and I came to here. I believe my professor is here also, but I don't know where."

"When you say 'here,'" Holmes said carefully, "you do not mean this specific location."

"No." I said and braced myself. "You see, this happened about two days ago from my perspective, but about thirty years in the future from your perspective."

There was a long silence as Holmes worked through the implications of this statement. I held my breath and waited for a sign that he was about to break his word and send me to an asylum after all. I believe I heard crickets chirping outside.

"You are saying," Holmes said slowly, "that you have travelled backwards in time as the result of a botched chemistry experiment?"

"Yes." There was another long silence.

"I assume the notebook you had with you belonged to this professor?" I nodded. Holmes produced the notebook from an inner jacket pocket. "I glanced through his equations on the train. There seems to be a great deal of energy unaccounted for in the reaction. And these theological musings seem to be a later addition."

"I thought the formation energy of silicon was missing a decimal place." I sighed tiredly. "I didn't have a reference table with me, and I couldn't leave the solution over the flame. The loose paper is my work." I said it without thinking, but it left Holmes stunned. He could not have been more shocked had I revealed myself as Queen Victoria in disguise.

"I told you I studied chemistry." I reminded him reproachfully.

"Why did you come to Sussex, of all places?"

"I live … lived…will live in the area. Damn, I don't know."

"I see." He knew there was still something I wasn't telling him, but he wisely left it alone. How could I say it? I am your wife, or rather, I will be once I'm born and grow up? Perhaps later, when things made more sense.

"So, now that you have arrived from the future, what will you do?" For a brief moment I thought I had actually convinced him. But now his tone was careful, as if I might fly into hysterics at any moment.

"There's no need to patronize me. If you don't believe me, you need only say so."

"You are asking me to believe a tale better suited to Jules Verne, or one of his ilk."

"I believe that it was H.G. Wells who wrote about a time machine."

"There is enough to contemplate in the world without venturing into the impossible fantasies of fiction."

"Impossible? Or merely improbable?" This stopped him dead in his tracks and he peered at me in the uncertain light, as if seeing me for the first time. Then he chuckled, so softly I was hardly sure I'd heard it.

"Very well then. Improbabilities aside, will you be my guest tonight? Or perhaps you would prefer something at the town inn."

"You have only one bed here." I said noncommittally. It was a long walk back to the village, and I had heard no carriage before Holmes arrived.

"On the contrary. There is another bed in the attic space. I assume that you have found the one on the upper story. Permit me to offer it to you for this night. Unless you want to contend against my misogynistic self for the honour of the attic?"

"Under other circumstances I would, but in this case I think will bow to the dictates of chivalry."

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Grr. Finals. More coming as soon as I'm done with RL.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	7. On Mornings

**Chapter Six**

**On Mornings **

Upon waking in unfamiliar places, there is always a brief moment of philosophical uncertainty as the brain starts out at _Cogito, ergo sum _and catches up with recent events.

I went downstairs, again hoping to find that this was all some sort of bizarre hallucination and that Holmes was sitting at the breakfast table, frowning over his paper. Sunlight streamed through the cracks in the boarded up windows. The house was as I remembered it last night, empty and bare.

_Damn_. I thought. Tears of anger and frustration sprang to my eyes, but I dashed them away. Much as I would have liked to indulge in a fit of hysterics, it would accomplish nothing.

I walked through the house, looking for this other Holmes. I finally caught sight of him outside the kitchen window, poking around among the disused hives. I had already begun to think of my husband as "my Holmes," and I couldn't help but thinking he would be amused at the possessive. The Holmes before me now was "the other Holmes," similar in mind and body, but not quite the same person.

He caught sight of me watching from the window, but didn't hurry his steps in the least. If anything, he lingered over the empty hives. A quick rummage through the kitchen revealed nothing edible, but for a suspiciously furry hunk of cheese and half a pot of lukewarm coffee. I ignored the cheese and poured myself a mug of coffee.

After a few fortifying sips I found that Holmes was still loitering among the hives, so I went out to meet him. He ignored my approach, being absorbed in prying open a hive to inspect the damage. From the state of things I thought that the house had been empty for perhaps a year and the hives unused for at least another year beyond that.

"A bit early to be thinking of retirement, isn't it?" I said conversationally. He paused for only the briefest of moments before responding.

"I have not even told Watson of my intentions yet. How do you know that?"

"Forewarned is forearmed." Holmes snorted derisively. I sighed and resorted to a more conventional route of deduction,

"All right, but what other need would a consulting detective have of a country cottage except as a retreat? Unless you plan on moving your base of operations from Baker Street." Holmes would not dignify me with a response, so I took it that the point was mine.

"Will you be returning to London?" Holmes asked.

"I…don't know." I sighed. "I have become a stranger in a strange land." I murmured, quoting the Bible verse in Hebrew. Holmes looked askance at me, but I didn't explain and he didn't press.

"I need to find Professor Jensen." I said finally. "If he got the same results as I did, he must be here as well. Perhaps he knows something more."

"Assuming that he did indeed follow his notes. He may well have added a critical component which he neglected to write down."

"Not Professor Jensen. He's very… scrupulous about things like that."

"Hmm." Holmes finally stopped tinkering with his hives and turned to face me. "I will give you the benefit of the doubt. We shall search out this Professor of yours."

I was completely nonplussed. I had been expecting to be dismissed out of hand, but Holmes seemed interested. He must have seen the surprise on my face, because he explained.

"You may be delusional, but then again you may be correct in every particular. Evidence is inconclusive at this point." And that seemed to be that. "Where are we going?"

"Oxford." I said, still a little confused and a bit suspicious. Perhaps he simply couldn't resist the curiosity of it. Of all the cases Holmes had ever heard, surely this one must be the most unique.

"Oxford? Oxford doesn't admit women as students."

"Yet." I corrected him. Strangely enough, I think it was this offhand statement more than anything else that convinced him of the truth of what I was saying. Oxford before 1910 was a firmly masculine institution, but my simple, confident declaration that would soon change made Holmes pause.

And so, to Oxford. Deprived of my dear old Morris, we took the train north. We spent the journey in mutual silence, absorbed in our own thoughts. Holmes had never been one for idle social conversation, and I was too afraid of what I might say. As we pulled into London, Holmes seemed to recall the conventions of social behaviour and made some perfunctory inquiries into my scholastic career.

I think I fascinated him. Certainly, he fascinated me. I was a quiet woman in spectacles who spoke knowledgably on chemistry, a subject always near to his heart. But I was, of course, a woman and therefore embodiment of all that Holmes so despised at this point in his career; intuition over logic, sensibility over sense, emotion over reason. My husband rarely spoke of his past career with me, but he didn't need to. I had known him for the greater portion of my life and what I couldn't deduce for myself was easily found out through chats with the Doctor. Uncle John knew Holmes better than either of them would admit.

This other Holmes was a very different man than the one I had known and married. Holmes himself had alluded to the fact that he had changed, one might say mellowed, a great deal since the time of Uncle John's narratives. Physically, he looked much the same. But for a few grey hairs and lines, Holmes looked much the same at sixty as he did at thirty.

The changes were almost entirely internal. This Holmes seemed to be simmering with tightly-controlled nervous energy. One tended to get the impression of a hunting hound, straining at the leash. My Holmes, to extend the analogy, was more of a wolfhound; the power and energy remained, but under an air of quiet tranquillity.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Well, now that finals have been defeated, we're back on track. Hopefully I can pick up the pace of postings.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	8. On Train Stations and Hotel Rooms

**Chapter Seven**

**On Train Stations and Hotel Rooms **

We had to change trains in London, a harrowing affair under the best of circumstances. As we tried to weave through the mob of commuters, Holmes was waylaid by one of the Irregulars. We heard the boy before we saw him, calling out Holmes' name above the general noise. The scruffy street urchin stumbled out from between the legs of the crowd and nearly cannoned into Holmes.

"Hallo guv'nor. Missus." He added, tipping the brim of his cap at me and grinning cheekily, revealing the two missing front teeth. A healing split lip suggested that he'd lost them in a street brawl rather than the more usual way. It took a moment before I realized the reason for his amused look. I was dressed as a woman of the lower classes. No doubt the boy was leaping to all sorts of conclusions that he should have been too young to know about.

"Stiggins," Holmes said sharply, "what is so important that you have set watch on the train stations?" The boy drew himself to attention to give his report. He directed his eyes upwards while he recited, as if reading the words off the rafters.

"Mister Doctor Watson sent me sir. 'e said that Mon-sewer Sau-va-ge-on wanted to see you right away about th' case. 'e said that you'd know what 'e meant." Holmes frowned and Stiggins' face fell.

"Is that all?" Holmes asked.

"Well… 'e also said that I should watch the trains from Sussex an' if that's where you really went he'd eat his cane. I probably weren't meant to 'ear that last bit." Stiggins admitted. I hid my grin. Holmes looked sharply at me.

A case had come up, and it was important enough for Watson to dispatch the Irregulars in search of Holmes. Holmes was intrigued enough by my bizarre story to travel to Oxford for closer investigation, but paying clients came first. He couldn't turn me loose and risk having me disappear again, but he certainly couldn't leave me at Baker Street or drag me along on this new case. I was an unknown quantity.

Holmes hesitated for only the briefest of moments.

"Miss Russell, I'm afraid I am going to have to take my leave of you momentarily. I am aware of your situation here in town," he continued, ploughing over any objections I might have, "so please allow me to show you to one of the City's hotels."

The man could be charmingly devious sometimes. I opened my mouth to object, but reconsidered. After all, where else did I have to go?

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes. That is very kind of you." I said, in dulcet tones that would have made my husband deeply suspicious. This Holmes cast me a surprised glance, but thought no more of it.

The hotel was not far from the train station. I had never been inside this particular establishment in my own time, since it catered mostly to foreign travellers. But such areas change little with the passage of time, and the façade looked much the same as it did in the Twenties.

The desk clerk had long ago developed a carefully neutral expression to deal with the vagaries of the patrons. He hardly batted an eye when Holmes, dressed as the quintessential gentleman of leisure, engaged a hotel room for a young woman looking as if she had just left work at the factory. If I was going to be here much longer, I was going to have to succumb to the dictates of fashion and wedge myself into those impossibly restricting Victorian garments.

Holmes apologized again, rather distractedly, and strode out the front door, leaving me alone in the wrong time and wrong place. I very nearly called after him, to beg him not to abandon me here. I controlled myself with an effort and turned to the clerk, asking if someone could show me up to the room.

I closed the hotel room door and shot the bolt with a sigh of relief. Since I had no bags to unpack, I made a search of the room, not expecting anything out of the ordinary and not finding anything either. It was a two room suite with a table, desk and chairs in the sitting room and a forest landscape hanging on one wall. All of the furniture was tastefully bland and impersonal. In short, it was exactly what one would expect from a tourist hotel.

I should say that I do not deal well with enforced idleness. When coupled with enforced helplessness, I felt like screaming. I was alone in a city that was at once foreign and familiar, dependent on the help of a man whom I would one day marry, though he didn't know it yet. The only man who could shed any light on my situation was Professor Jansen, and God alone knew where he had gotten to.

My window overlooked the street in front of the hotel and I watched the traffic pass as I considered my predicament. I was nearly ready to walk out and make my own way to Oxford, and Holmes be damned, when I caught sight of Stiggins the Irregular sheltering in the lee of a building.

I couldn't help but smile. Holmes still didn't trust me not to bolt, or perhaps he hoped that I would try and contact someone and thus reveal my true identity. As I watched the boy watching me, an idea popped into my head.

I left the hotel and stepped out onto the street. The lunchtime crowd coupled with the comings and going of the hotel patrons made for very busy sidewalks. The boy didn't realize I was headed in his direction until it was too late to bolt.

"Hallo missus." He said nervously.

"Hello. Stiggins, wasn't it?"

"Yes missus."

"I know Mr. Holmes asked you to keep an eye on me." Stiggins looked determinedly at a point just over my left shoulder, refusing to meet my gaze. "I wanted to ask you a favour of you as well."

"A favour?"

"I want you to get me the past week's copies of any newspaper that would carry news from Oxford."

"Yeah?" Stiggins asked, finally looking me directly in the eyes. "And why should I want to do that?"

I hesitated. I had nothing that could be considered money. Only the notebook containing the chemical formulae and theological ramblings had made the journey with me, and even that was currently in the possession of Holmes. Stiggins saw my hesitation and smirked triumphantly.

"No cash, lady, no job. I got me poor ol' mam to think about." He added piously. Somehow I doubted filial responsibility had anything to do with it.

"I don't have any cash. Maybe there's something I could trade? I can read and write." I offered, knowing that these skills would be a rarity among the Irregulars. Although they tended to be of the more intelligent variety of street arab, the Irregulars still only had a passing acquaintance with formal learning. They could probably read street signs and sign their name, but that was all. Stiggins made a disgusted noise.

"I don't need no readin' or writin'." He scoffed and I winced. Stiggins resumed watching the traffic, but now he had a reflective look on his face.

"Perhaps you know someone who does need reading or writing." Stiggins shrugged, as if to indicate in a general way that there might be such a person. "Tell you what: I'll go back to my hotel room and when you get a chance you can find this someone and ask them."

I didn't give Stiggins a chance to argue. I turned on my heel and strode straight back into the hotel and up to my room. I went to the window and saw that Stiggins was still at his post. I took a book from the shelves provided by the hotel and pulled a chair up to the window, so Stiggins could see that I was not trying to trick him into abandoning his post.

The book was Dickens' _Great Expectations_. Despite being what my husband disparagingly called a "professional student", the English Canon of Literature was somewhat outside my area of expertise. The book seemed vaguely familiar though; no doubt I had been assigned it in school at some point. I had just gotten to the point where young Pip is introduced to Miss Haversham when I looked up to find Stiggins had disappeared. It took a few minutes of scanning the crowd before I saw his replacement, a boy wearing an unbelievable number of coats despite the hot weather.

It was well into the afternoon and I was wondering if I dared order tea in my room and charge it to Holmes when I saw the man himself headed up the street. The scout caught sight of him and dashed up to give his report under the guise of begging for pennies. He received a couple of coins and dodged a half-hearted blow for his trouble and Holmes entered the hotel.

I considered going down to meet him; a bachelor meeting an (ostensibly) unmarried woman in her rooms was scandalous enough, but either Holmes missed the implications or he simply didn't care. I suspected the latter, but perhaps the comings and goings of so many tourists meant the staff was too busy to notice and gossip.

"We will go to Oxford tomorrow and investigate the possibility of your professor being there." Holmes said as I let him into the sitting room of the hotel suite.

"And what of Mon-sewer Sau-va-ge-on's case?" I asked, mimicking Stiggins pronunciation.

"It will keep." Holmes said dismissively. "In the meantime I have decided to accept your story."

"You have?" I asked, frankly surprised.

"It covers all of the available facts."

"Innocent until proven guilty?"

"Something like that. In any case, you will need more than what you are wearing."

"Er, what?" I said, momentarily taken aback by the _non sequitur_.

"Perhaps they do things differently in the future, Miss Russell," _You have no idea_, I thought, "but here you will need different clothes in order to pass without notice."

"Ah. Meaning?"

"A tailor, Miss Russell. Unless you care to keep your current ensemble?" I glanced down at the oddly matched white blouse and brown skirt, both looking rather worn from their treatment over the past two days. Holmes had been digging through various pockets for his smoking paraphernalia and rolled himself a cigarette. He abruptly remembered my presence and shot a questioning glance in my direction. I gave a brief wave to indicate my permission and he lit the cigarette.

"I don't want to be a burden," I said, thinking of my lack of funds. Holmes started to dismiss my objection. "I don't want to be a pet project either." I added sharply.

"If what you say is true," Holmes said slowly, "and you are indeed from another era, you have nowhere else to go. But if what you say is false," I noted that he carefully avoided the phrase 'a lie', "Then you present a curious problem, something which I flatter myself in considering myself an expert in. In either case, I can help you. If you would prefer to try your luck alone, that is, of course, your choice."

I wouldn't and we both knew it, but I had to make at least a token resistance, if only to soothe my ego.

"I can't pay, you know."

"Consider it a part of my fees for taking on your case. I do arrange my rates on a variable scale."

"The Adventure of the Time-Travelling Professor?" I asked sweetly and Holmes scowled. He was saved from responding by a knock on the door.

Holmes' vast and varied network of acquaintances never failed to amaze me. He had often complained that the rich and powerful have tediously ordinary problems; the truly unique and bizarre cases often involved those who could not afford a private detective. In these cases, instead of money he sometimes asked for future assistance, something which often turned out to be infinitely more valuable.

The tailor who entered the room, along with an assistant to carry his things, was probably one of those clients who had offered his talents instead of money for services rendered. He was a tall man, nearly the equal of Holmes, and bone thin. His movements were slow and slightly stiff, probably just recovering from an illness. His assistant was a lanky girl on the edge of puberty with a strong family resemblance.

"Since your wardrobe was lost on the journey from America, Mr. Gerali here will provide you with some suitable clothing." Holmes said, speaking to me but looking at Mr. Gerali. The tailor knew Holmes well enough to catch the unspoken message.

"Always a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Holmes." The tailor said with deliberation.

"Would you do me the honour of joining me for dinner, Miss Russell?" Holmes asked, moving towards the door. "I still have some trifling matters to attend to."

"Monsieur Sauvignon?" I asked.

"I shall see you tonight." Holmes said, choosing not to notice that I had not answered him.

The tailor and his daughter got to work with the quiet efficiency of an expert team. They had brought with them an assortment of loosely-tailored garments that needed only a bit of adjustment in order to fit me. I was much taller, and less shapely, than the average Victorian woman, but Gerali and his daughter managed to pin me into two acceptably modest day dresses and an evening gown.

The overall effect suggested a governess who was down on her luck; respectable enough to move through society, but nondescript enough to fade into a crowd. I wondered if the tailor was under specific orders from Holmes, or had made the decision of his own accord.

The tailor and his daughter left as the sun was going down, well pleased with their efforts. I tried not to squirm uncomfortably in the unfamiliar clothes and whispered a silent prayer of thanks that I had been born in an age with enough sense to do away with the corset.

Holmes returned as promised for dinner in the hotel restaurant, bringing with him the faint scent of the docks. The dinner itself, while adequate in a culinary sense, proved to be an intense battle of wits and wills. By the time the coffee arrived I was more than willing to make a strategic withdrawal.

Holmes kept up a constant barrage of questions regarding my life, which I did my best to answer without revealing too much while firing off my own questions about his current case. The name Sauvignon seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had heard it before, or if I had even heard it from Holmes. After all, it was not a terribly uncommon French name.

Neither of us learned much during this verbal skirmish, being too busy keeping the other from discovering too much. It was an exhausting way to spend the evening. It was made even worse by the constant reminders that despite his appearance and mannerisms, this was not the man I had married. But he _was_ the man I would marry. But I had already married him, so…

I shook myself out of the unproductive circle of reasoning. I would find the Professor, return home, and forget all this like a bad dream. Over coffee Holmes noticed my preoccupation.

"This professor of yours," Holmes began, getting out the ever-present tobacco.

"He's not my professor," I said absently, an automatic response to his choice of phrase.

"If all you say is true," Holmes continued, ignoring my interruption, "what makes you think he will be able to help?"

"It was his experiment. Campus rumour said he was looking for a replacement for tungsten, but he could have been working on something else and spread the rumour himself to avoid suspicion." I explained Professor Jansen's paranoia regarding his research and the reasons behind it.

"Like a method of time travel?" Holmes' sounded highly sceptical and I didn't blame him. I must have presented quite the paradox by acting perfectly reasonable and logical, but for my insistence on the impossible.

"Perhaps."

"You are trying to be difficult." He accused, with a puff of smoke.

"I'm not trying." I protested.

"You are concealing information from me."

"And you don't trust me. What's to stop you from sending me off to the madhouse?"

"I did give you my word." Holmes pointed out mildly. I sighed. A stranger he may be, but he was still Holmes, and to Holmes his word was as good as a legal contract.

"I've told you all I can." I said, standing up from the table. Holmes, interestingly enough and against established custom, stayed seated for a long moment before remembering his manners.

"Tomorrow then, Miss Russell."

I don't know how I managed to get back to my room. I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly walked into the door before I saw it. I glanced out the window and saw that the boy watching the front door of the hotel had been joined by a couple of friends. I left the curtains open and the light on and threw myself into bed, instantly falling asleep.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	9. Interlude

**Chapter Eight**

**Interlude**

I was falling through a jumbled ocean of sensation. Half-heard conversations and laughter, a blur of colour and light, something soft brushing across my arm, sending shivers down my spine.

The sensory overload faded and I was sitting in my rooms at Oxford, my bare feet stretched out to the fire crackling in the hearth.

"Welcome back." Holmes said around the pipe in his mouth. He was seated in the window, watching the traffic in the courtyard below.

"Thanks." I glanced down at the book in my hands. It was _The Time Machine_ by H.G. Wells. I smiled and dropped the book on a nearby table. The dangers of reading speculative fiction before nodding off. I stretched and sat up.

"Was I asleep?"

"You are."

"What?"

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	10. On the Economy of the Moneyless

**Chapter Nine**

**On the Economy of the Moneyless **

I woke to find the sun streaming in the window, accompanied by the noises of the City waking. I rolled over and cursed feelingly into my pillow.

I dressed in the unfamiliar clothes and was about to take myself downstairs in search of breakfast, or at least coffee, when there was a knock at my door. I opened it, expecting Holmes and finding Stiggins, who was accompanied by a younger street urchin. I invited them in and they both stood uneasily just inside the door, refusing offers to sit down.

"This 'ere is Mikey." Stiggins said. Mikey removed the bowler hat which threatened to engulf his entire head and held it nervously in front of him. He was dressed like Stiggins, in an assortment of cast-offs and hand-me-downs, none of which quite fit or matched.

"You can get me the newspapers I need?" I asked Mikey.

"Yessum." He said in a small voice.

"And there's something I can help you with in return?" I encouraged.

Mikey cast a desperate look at Stiggins, then summoned up his courage to say, "Yessum."

"Oh just tell 'er Mikey." Stiggins snapped. I couldn't tell if the boy suffered from some speech impediment or was merely shy to the point of terror around strangers. It took several stops and starts while Mikey gathered his thoughts or his courage to continue, but I got the story eventually.

"Me brother is in India in the army." Mikey explained. "He sends our Ma letters every month and me sister would read them to Ma 'cause her sight's gone all foggy. But me sister's family what that she works for moved away for the summer, so now there's no one to read Ma her letters."

I sat back in my chair. Frankly, I had been expecting something a bit more, well, complex than reading a soldier's letters to his family. I was asking for a great deal of newspaper, which wouldn't be at all easy to find and would cost quite a bit by the standards of the Irregulars. Stiggins must have seen the doubt on my face, because he explained.

"Mikey's ma is always good t' us." By "us" I assumed he meant the Irregulars. "Allus a good word and somfing to eat if we want it. She took care of Sparrow and 'is sister when they took ill."

I was momentarily taken aback by this glimpse of the complex economics and loyalties of London's lower classes.

"Mr. Holmes and I are going to Oxford today," I said. Stiggins suddenly smacked himself on the forehead with his open palm. Mikey and I stared.

"Clean forgot, missus. The guv'nor told me to give you this." He fished a scrap of notepaper from one of his many pockets.

_Sauvignon did not keep. Apologies. Call at 221B Baker Street if you wish. Will send word at first opportunity. -Holmes_

I scowled. Even his letters sounded like telegrams. Holmes' usually precise script was a bit untidy. Whatever had happened with Monsieur Sauvignon must have been urgent. I should have been upset at being dismissed out of hand, but in truth I was relieved. If Jensen was in Oxford, he was not likely to go anywhere in the next twenty-four hours, and this gave me the opportunity to follow my own line of inquiry.

"Well, Mikey. It appears that I can help you today."

Mikey, whose last name was revealed to be Stephenson, and his mother lived only seven blocks from the hotel, in an area of town which was losing the battle against the encroaching slums. The residents wore their respectability like a badge of honour, or perhaps a shield against the pimps and thugs who ruled the adjacent streets. It was most certainly not an area for an unescorted young female.

Mikey trotted ahead of me, while Stiggins and another Irregular strolled along behind. Apparently the Irregulars' orders consisted merely of keeping track of me and not actually confining me to the hotel. They were toeing the line between obedience and insurrection, but if anything, they seemed amused by this turn of events.

We arrived at the Stephenson household, a three room flat on the second floor of a tenement complex, unmolested. Mikey called out a greeting and was answered from the kitchen.

"Who is that with you Michael?"

"Miss Mary, Ma!" Mikey called back, without stumbling over the alliteration. His voice returned to him on his home ground, though he still spoke with an odd, halting lisp. Stiggins and the other Irregular had vanished as soon as we were safely delivered to the Stephenson's door, hopefully to unearth the requested newspapers.

"Miss Mary?" Mrs. Stephenson emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands with a towel. I could see the milky white of the cataracts which now obscured her vision, but it did not prevent her from sensing that I was rather taller than her son's usual friends. Despite the loss of her sight and her relatively small stature, she moved without hesitation and dominated the household with the sheer weight of her personality.

I quickly explained that Mikey had guided me to my hotel yesterday and I had promised to read the letters by way of payment. Mrs. Stephenson's expression went from suspicious to misty in an instant.

"Such a good boy." She murmured and Mikey's ears turned red.

It was not the first time I had been in such a position, although before I was reading family letters to soldiers during the War, when the local hospital was inundated with gassed and limbless soldiers. Mail call was inevitably a bittersweet experience, and I often returned home near tears.

Fortunately, Mrs. Stephenson's eldest son was not in active combat and his letters reflected a rather bored young man looking forward to the end of his tour of duty. There was three months accumulation of letters and it took the better part of two hours to finish reading them, and of course I had to stay for tea afterwards. Mrs. Stephenson talked non-stop about her brood, which seemed to include, by unofficial adoption, half the Irregulars. Mikey shrugged apologetically; no doubt he'd heard it all a dozen times before.

Stiggins reappeared as we finished our tea. Mrs. Stephenson extracted a vague promise of a return visit and we left, Mikey positively skipping and Stiggins looking excessively pleased with himself.

Stiggins had good reason to be pleased with himself. When we returned to the hotel room the third and still unnamed Irregular was sitting in front of the door next to a stack of newspapers more than a foot high.

"We couldn't get all the newspapers you wanted." Stiggins said apologetically.

"This should be fine." I assured him, a bit stunned by the size of the stack. I had forgotten how many newspapers there were in London. The Irregulars returned to their street corners and I hauled the pile of paper inside.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Several hours later the floor of the room was covered in newsprint. I had been relieved to find that I could throw away half the pile in one go, since any news about a strange man in Oxford was not likely to be in the business and financial papers. I closely examined the agony columns and the crime sections for any hint of a man resembling Professor Jensen.

It was tedious work, although I was briefly amused by a notice in the agony columns for any friends or relations of Mary Russell to apply to Baker Street. I ordered a pot of coffee from the maid to help my focus, but not even half the pot could keep the lines of newsprint from running together. The papers themselves did not help, since many were two or more days old and had been salvaged from rubbish bins. Finger smudges and food stains blotted out a great many articles.

By the time I turned an old copy of _The Guardian_, I was merely scanning the headlines of articles. I cast a brief glance over the police blotter and was about to turn the page when something caught my eye. It took a very close reading before I found the relevant sentence again, buried in the middle of a column.

It was brief, a mere handful of sentences describing a man found wandering in Oxford the previous day, and a request for anyone with information to contact the Oxfordshire constabulary.

Holmes arrived a little after noon to find me awash in a sea of newsprint, my eyes on the tastefully bland watercolour and my mind miles away.

"Doing your own research?" He asked. I pulled the relevant paper from the flotsam.

"I circled the article. The man fits the description of Professor Jensen and he appeared on the same day the professor disappeared."

"Hmm. If the police have laid hands on him, it will make our task much easier."

"Speaking of tasks, have you caught Monsieur Sauvignon yet?" It was by no means an innocent question, and Holmes looked up sharply.

"I suppose you are going to claim some knowledge of his activities due to your futuristic providence?" I thought that was a terribly bombastic way of putting it, although he was partly right. I had come across a newspaper article regarding a con man which had triggered the memory.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

We had been lingering over coffee at Simpson's during what Holmes insisted on calling our First Anniversary Dinner, so that I could almost hear the capital letters sliding into place. Holmes had never been one for conventional formalities, and in any case the actual anniversary had been a few weeks previous, but due to a case we were in no position to celebrate. I was sure that he was doing it just to annoy. It must have been the recent case which had triggered the reminisce, which came quite out of the blue.

"One must always beware the determined amateur, Russell." He said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, when it became apparent that he was not going to elaborate on this apothegm.

"I am reminded of a case from the Baker Street days. A man named Sauvignon, an average con man, who made his living preying off the gullible. His favourite ploy was to present himself to some middle-class lady as the Comte de Beauxbaton, a down-and-out French nobleman. He would swindle the lady out of her money with a slick accent and false tales of a huge estate back in France embroiled in probate court, which he could easily get back if only he had the money for solicitor's fees."

"Dear me," I had murmured, shocked at the naïveté of those women.

"Indeed. The sums were never large enough for anger at being swindled to overcome the shame of it, until one lady was recommended to me by a friend who had been a client. Once the man got wind that I was on his trail he fled, leaving a good portion of his ill-gotten gains behind in a safe deposit box. The money was eventually split between the victims who came forward."

"The man was an amateur at swindling, but he proved to be a natural at disappearing. It took nearly three years before I finally ran him to ground in the East End." Holmes gave a short, unamused laugh. "Do you know he had been London the entire time I watched the ports for him? He convinced a factory girl to claim him as a cousin and worked a variety of odd jobs before one of the Irregulars caught sight of him."

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

I gave this Holmes part of the truth.

"No, I merely have a newspaper describing an attempted arrest a few days ago. Since no mention was made of a capture in a later edition, I assume that you have not found him yet."

"And the newspapers?"

"The Irregulars." Holmes scowled at the irresponsibility of his army of street arabs and I hastened to explain. I would hate for Stiggins and his friends to be suspected of colluding with a possible enemy. Holmes' scowl faded as I explain how I had cornered Stiggins with my request for newspapers and the subsequent bargain.

"The economy of the money-less." Holmes muttered, then said in a louder tone, "I shall have to remind them how to watch without being seen."

"I wouldn't have seen them if I hadn't been looking." I offered. Holmes grunted, as if this was no excuse.

"You want proof." I said. Holmes paused, a lit match halfway to the bowl of his pipe.

"You know where Sauvignon is?" He asked.

"In a general sort of way." I said, my eyes on the flame which was creeping steadily towards Holmes' fingers. "I couldn't give you a street address."

"What can you give me?" Holmes shook out the match, lit another and applied it to his pipe.

"He won't try and flee the country. He'll go to ground in the East End. Whitechapel or thereabouts. I'm sure your Irregulars will be able to pick him out."

"That is precious little to go on." I shrugged. I could tell him that it was a minor case thirty years ago, so it was a miracle that I had heard of it at all. But I sensed the next question would be how I knew it at all, so I cast about for a change of topic.

"I suppose this means Oxford is out of the question for today."

"Nonsense. We may still catch a train headed north. If Sauvignon is where you say he is, then he may remain there a bit longer."

"And if not?" I couldn't help but asking.

"There is a watch set on the ports. But since I cannot scour either the East End or all outgoing ships for signs of my criminal, I may at least go to Oxford to help you find your professor." Holmes shrugged, as if annoyed at the admittance of his own lack of omnipotence.

Since this was exactly what I wanted, I made no difficulties about being ushered on the train without any lunch. The Irregulars, relieved of their duty of watching me, were dispatched to Whitechapel to look for Sauvignon. It appeared that Doctor Watson was immersed in a tricky case of influenza, and would be unable to join us. I was secretly thankful. Just dealing with Holmes was going to be difficult enough. I couldn't handle meeting a young Uncle John as well.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

My New Year's Present to you all. Hope you kids have fun!

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	11. On Nadir

_**Chapter Ten**_

**_On Nadir_**

In the end, it proved to be extraordinarily easy to track down Professor Jensen. A few words with the Oxford constabulary, along with the judicious use of Holmes' name, showed that a man matching Jensen's description had been picked up four days ago. He had been ranting about time travel, quite clearly mad, so the police had sent him along to the doctors.

The hospital was on the outskirts of the city, right at the point where the houses and shops suddenly turned into farms and fields. Holmes seemed to be more intrigued, now that we had found someone that matched the professor's description. The evidence in my favour was rapidly accumulating.

As we stepped out of the cab, I had to suppress a snigger. After all that fuss, I had ended up at the madhouse anyway. Of course, I was walking in of my own volition, which makes a world of difference.

The Oxford Hospital for the Mentally Deranged was still standing in the Twenties, though the name had since been changed to the less ominous St. Brutus's Hospital. It had once been some baron's country home before he bequeathed it to Charitable Causes and it still looked the part of a country manor. It was only when one noticed the lack of sharp objects and the utilitarian nature of the furniture underneath the antimacassars, did one realize this was no family home. A faint smell of antiseptic permeated the air.

Psychiatry was still in its infancy, and mental health care consisted mainly of locking people up in the hopes they would get better. The quality of facilities varied widely from place to place. Some were more like hotels than hospitals, who catered to women suffering from "nervous exhaustion" and "hysteria" while others were little better than prisons. The Oxford Hospital seemed to be leaning towards the former.

Given the expression of surprise on the face of the maid who answered the door, the hospital did not get many unanticipated visitors. She showed us into the director's office, which had once been a private library, saying that she would have to track down the man. I caught a glimpse of faint sepsis scars on her fingers and mentally revised her status to nurse.

"I think perhaps it would be better for us to be familial relations rather than investigators." I said.

"Cousins looking for their poor mad uncle?" Holmes said. "That should do nicely. You should let me-" the door opened and the director of the hospital swept in, interrupting Holmes' attempt to dictate to me.

The director introduced himself as Doctor Mitchell, the title very clearly a part of his name. He seated himself behind his expansive desk with barely a glance at either of us. To further underscore the interruption our arrival had caused, Doctor Mitchell shuffled through a sheaf of papers that he had brought with him for a moment before actually looking at us.

"Can I help you?" The doctor was looking at Holmes, but I jumped in and took the advantage away from both of them.

"My name is Miss Judith Jensen. This is my cousin, Mr. John Jensen." I said, pitching my voice slightly higher than usual and speaking in a slightly breathless tone. Holmes, my Holmes that is, called it my "dithering schoolgirl" voice. I was pulling names out of the air, and I didn't realize the alliteration until it was too late. At least they had the advantage of being so silly no one would actually use them as false names.

"Our uncle has an unfortunate habit of forgetting who he is and wandering off. He's quite harmless really, but he hardly knows what he's doing sometimes. Uncle Robert disappeared a few days ago from the family home up Leeds way, and I saw in the newspaper that the police found a man wandering about Oxford, so John and I decided that we would come investigate."

I said all of it in practically one breath. Doctor Mitchell and his condescension were steamrollered by the constant stream of words. Holmes was utterly taken aback, although whether it was by was my silly-girl act or my sudden manipulation of the situation I couldn't say. Whatever he was thinking, he hid it behind the genial mask of John Jensen.

"Oh? Yes, well- That is to say-," Doctor Mitchell coughed and his professional manner returned. "Might I have your uncle's name and a physical description?" Mitchell addressed himself to Holmes, but again I gave the answer.

"His full name is Robert Jensen, although sometimes he forgets even that." I didn't think that Jensen would be cautious enough to give a pseudonym, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.

"He is a bit shorter than me, with white hair, and he's going bald. He wears reading glasses most of the time and he's a bit, ah, rotund." I finished with an embarrassed air. Jensen was one of those individuals who are not really fat, merely very solid.

"Oh yes, Mr. Jensen. I'm afraid he seems to be suffering from delusions of grandeur." Doctor Mitchell said, placing a curiously pretentious accent on the vowels.

"Oh! He's here?" I nearly squealed and Holmes winced. "May we see him, please?"

"Of course. The nurse will show you around." Doctor Mitchell rang the bell for the nurse with palpable relief. Perhaps Jensen was a difficult patient.

"What sort of delusions?" Holmes asked. Doctor Mitchell looked startled at his sudden entrance to the conversation.

"Claimed he was a professor at Oxford. That's where he was found there, wandering the college grounds. The dons knew nothing about him of course, so the police sent him to us." Doctor Mitchell permitted himself a chuckle. "He said he would be a professor in the future, of all things. Somebody has been letting him read that speculative fiction nonsense. I should watch what he's allowed to read, if he's as susceptible to delusions as you say Miss Jensen." I gritted my teeth and let it pass.

Another nurse arrived, looking considerably more harried that Mitchell, and we stood to go.

"When do you think Uncle Robert might be released?" I asked.

"Today, if you like. He's no danger, just very confused." Dr. Mitchell said, and shooed us out of his office.

"That was a neat bit of acting." Holmes murmured as we followed in the wake of the nurse.

"I learned from the best." I whispered back, then remembered whom I was talking to. The physical blow of the realization nearly stopped me in my tracks. The only thing that saved me was our arrival at Jensen's room.

"Here we are, sir and miss," she said. "Just ring if you need anything."

"Thank you." Holmes said, with a sidelong glance at me.

Judging from the number of bare shelves set near to the ground, Jensen's room was probably the former nursery. There was a utilitarian bed, along with a table and chairs, and a bland painting of what was meant to be a cheery village scene. The curtains were flung open to catch the sun. Jensen was sitting at the table, muttering under his breath and scribbling furiously, his nose mere inches from the paper.

He certainly looked mad. Suddenly, I had doubts. Jensen was not the first man I would choose to defend my claims to sanity under normal circumstances, and it was perfectly possibly that the shock of time travel had unhinged his already scattered brain.

"Professor Jensen." It was less a statement than a query. Holmes hung back a bit, watching everything but saying nothing.

"Not now." Jensen snapped. "I'm working on my formulas. If you want to make yourself useful you can…" I never found out what I could do, because Jensen finally looked up and recognized me.

"Miss Russo?" He asked, baffled.

"Russell." I corrected automatically. For whatever reason, he was rarely able to remember the names of his students and colleagues, but he was _consistently_ inaccurate. I had become "Russo" during our brief acquaintance.

"I've come to get you out." I began, but he interrupted me by waving his notes under my nose.

"You figured it out as well! Isn't it marvellous? The applications in the field of research are endless. I hope you brought my notes with you, I'm finding it quite impossible to get along without them. Who are you?" Jensen finally noticed Holmes.

"My name is Sherlock Holmes." Holmes said with a slight nod. I winced and braced for the inevitable.

I was known in Oxford for "The Best Lecture Never Given." My presentation of a paper on the Divine Feminine was pre-empted by my kidnapping at the hands of a suspect in an investigation and followed by my abrupt marriage to Holmes. The combination of kidnapping, lecture and nuptials conspired to make me the talk of Oxford for months. Not even Jensen and his usual blithe ignorance of social affairs could have missed the gossip.

"Pleasure." Jensen said automatically, without a hint of recognition. Holmes raised an eyebrow and even I was surprised. I must have overestimated Jensen's familiarity of the world outside of the spires of Oxford.

"Mr. Jensen, I understand you work at Oxford?" Holmes said.

"I do. _Professor_ of Chemistry, thank you very much. This may be the past, but that's no excuse for rudeness." Holmes raised an eyebrow at the apparent _non sequitur_.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I invented time travel, my good sir." Jensen said with a flourish of his pencil. "And instead of hailing it as the technological breakthrough of the century, those fools throw me out on my ear."

"Do you have any proof?" Jensen reached into his pocket, pulled out a couple of pennies and dashed them on the table.

"There is my proof." He said triumphantly. Holmes examined the coins. They were imprinted, not with the image of Victoria Regina, but George V. The dates ranged from 1911 through 1921.

"They could be forged." I said, before Holmes had a chance to.

"It would be extremely easy to forge these." Holmes agreed, rolling a penny over his knuckles.

"My chemistry notes are dated." Jensen said petulantly. "You can go check them. You did bring the notes with you?" I nodded. "There you are then."

"It is as easy to write one series of numbers as another." Holmes replied. His eyes were still on the penny, but his thoughts were miles away.

"Circumstantial and hearsay evidence," I said, only half-joking. "A decent lawyer would tear it all to shreds."

Jensen decided to ignore Holmes' disbelief and turned to me.

"Look here Miss Russo, we need to go to the University. If the Dean won't believe me, I'll go over his head to the Chancellor. Now that you're here to back up my statement, and now that I have the necessary formulas, I can prove that time travel is possible."

He was serious. He really believed that a witness (a female witness, no less) and a notebook of half-illegible notations would convince the Chancellor of Oxford to fund his research. I doubt that he paused once to think of the potential ramifications of this new technology.

Historical research would be only the beginning. It would be only a matter of time before people tried to change the past. It was so tempting; a slight nudge in the course of history and the Archduke would never be assassinated, Europe would never be plunged into four years of purgatory and my family would never take that last vacation to the summer house which ended in tragedy. Or perhaps it would happen all over again, just in a slightly different way.

This was perilously close to playing God for my taste. What was to stop one from manipulating time to suit their own whims? A shiver ran down my spine when I thought of the damage even a well-intentioned person could cause.

"I can't help you Professor." I said softly, trying to dismiss the uneasy feelings from my mind. "I very much doubt the Chancellor would think much of my opinions." I turned to Holmes and asked, "Are you satisfied?"

"That you speak the truth? I am." Holmes paused and I think he was as startled as I. "I can find no hole in your alibi, except that it has never been done before. But then, if you are correct, it has just been done." He grinned, as if pleased by the paradox. I groaned. He wouldn't think it so funny in thirty years when…

I sat bolt upright. Holmes. My Holmes. Was time passing in the future? Was Holmes investigating my disappearance? Did he remember this very conversation, thirty years in the past? Was he only now realizing the resemblance between the Mary Russell he met in a gaol cell and the Mary Russell who nearly fell over him on Sussex Downs?

It was a good thing I was already sitting down, because I would have nearly fainted if I had been upright. I leaned forward and buried my head in my hands. I felt as if I was in another woman's body, merely observing.

"What is the matter?" Holmes asked, with real concern. Anger and embarrassment quickly burned away the disorientation. He didn't try to approach, thankfully, or else I might have lost control completely.

"I hate this." I said quietly.

"I wouldn't expect you to like it." Holmes replied in the same quiet voice. "Given the circumstances, you seem to be holding up rather well." For a woman. He didn't say it, but just barely. Some instinct caused him to bite off the last part of the sentence.

Footsteps approached the door. Holmes and I both fell silent, listening, while Jensen looked puzzled. The footsteps continued to a door down the hall and we relaxed.

"Perhaps it is time to make our exit." I said.

"I may be convinced of your sanity, but I doubt many others would believe us if they were to hear this conversation." Holmes agreed.

"You can get me out of here?" Jensen asked hopefully. I explained to Jensen that we were going to be his niece and nephew, the children of two of his brothers. Jensen started to protest that he had only one brother when realization dawned.

There was actually very little fuss involved in Jensen's release. I received few papers which I signed in a deliberately shaky hand with the name Judith J. Jensen and an admonition not to let my poor deluded uncle wander about and we were standing on the platform waiting for the train to London before dinner. Holmes found himself writing a cheque for his "uncle's" hospital stay; this week had been trying on his pocketbook. But if he was buying Sussex cottages, no doubt he had a little money to spare.

We managed to commandeer a compartment to ourselves and Holmes continued to interrogate Jensen, with only moderate success. Jensen was far more interested in lecturing on chemical minutia than giving a coherent account of himself. He corroborated my story at least. Jensen had been working in the lab when the experiment exploded. Upon waking and discovering himself approximately thirty years in the past, he had gone straight to the Dean of the College, demanding a chair and stipend in order to research his discovery of time travel. Jensen was baffled by the Dean's unenthusiastic reaction.

"After all, it only needs a bit of fine tuning." Jensen said. He was addressing himself primarily to me. Holmes seemed amused and slightly baffled by this reaction. He was used to fear, awe and suspicion, not outright dismissal. "I suspect the quantities of chemicals are directly proportional to the amount of time which is bridged. You followed my instructions exactly, I assume?"

"Yes." I said through gritted teeth. Dealing with Jensen grated on my nerves. I didn't appreciate being talked to as if I was a barely competent research assistant. "I followed the experiment in the notebook exactly."

"I can't think what went wrong." Jensen mused. "It should have crystallized into a compound capable of conducting electricity. Perhaps the catalyst interfered somehow."

"The formation energy of sodium is off by a couple of decimal places." I said. "There are a few other math errors as well."

"Oh bother. I thought it might be something like that. But it worked for you too! That means the results are repeatable." I had the sudden image of Jensen continually moving backwards in time like a demented game of leapfrog.

"I don't care about moving back in time. I want to go home."

"Oh." Jensen abruptly deflated, the joy of discovery lost in reality. "Oh yes."

"Do you think it's possible to reverse the process?"

"I don't know. Even if I did, there's no way of knowing when it would send you. One could easily go too far into the future."

"We have to try." I growled, quickly losing patience with Jensen's "absent-minded professor" mannerisms. Jensen reeled back, stunned, and Holmes raised an eyebrow. Even I was surprised by the raw emotion in my voice. "If a reaction is possible," I continued in a calmer tone, "then logically the opposite reaction is also possible."

"Theoretically. But perhaps not practically." Holmes said gently, coming to Jensen's rescue.

"No offence meant to your decade, Mr. Holmes, but I want to return home very badly."

There wasn't really anything to say after that. Holmes turned his attention to his pipe and Jensen buried himself in his formulae. I went for a walk. There wasn't really any place to go, but I couldn't stay in the compartment any longer. I walked the length of the train, and ended up in the dining car, which was empty but for a banker deeply immersed in the business section of the _Times_.

It was infuriating. The man responsible for my banishment in this time knew no more about the situation than I did. Moreover, he seemed to be totally unaware of the implications of his accidental discovery. My last tenuous hope had vanished.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Yeesh, that was a long time between updates. Apologies, but real life sort of attacked there.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	12. On Hypotheses

**_Chapter Eleven_**

**_On Hypotheses_**

Holmes found me staring out the window as the London suburbs flashed by. He sat across from me, but did not take out his tobacco. We watched the scenery flash by in companionable quiet.

"What will you do now?" He asked.

"I'm not sure." I said. Up until this point I had been focused on finding Jensen, in the somewhat deluded belief that he would be able to fix everything. That was clearly not the case.

"There is always America." Holmes offered. "I understand the western provinces are more accepting of brains and ability, no matter the vessel."

"No." I said simply. America: the land of my father's people. The temptation would be far too great. If not for the death of my family, I likely would have never met Holmes on the Downs, and if I had things still might not have turned out as they had. Perhaps it was selfishness, but I didn't want to risk losing what I had. Despite my actions in the Sauvignon case, I was beginning to realize any interference could have disastrous consequences.

"A governess position?"

"I don't think that would be wise." I shuddered at the thought of being in charge of two or three screaming brats and at the beck and call of the lady of the house. I'd probably go mad within the week. "I'm not terribly good with children."

"I suppose teaching would carry the same difficulties." Holmes said, with the barest hint of amusement creeping into his voice.

"Even worse than being a governess. Three children would be hard enough, but thirty?" I shuddered melodramatically and Holmes chuckled. I had utmost respect for those benevolent dictators who ruled the classroom, which was only increased by the sure knowledge that I would never have the patience to do the job myself.

"I can't sew, I can't cook and I detest cleaning. I think that covers everything that a 'proper young lady of breeding' may do for a career." I spat the words with the venom which usually accompanied any mention of my aunt. She had quoted that exact phrase at me before I went off to Oxford. Holmes raised a single eyebrow at my tone, but wisely didn't pursue it.

"You forget secretarial work." He pointed out. I winced. I had tried this profession before, in the course of a case, and found it to be curiously hazardous to a young, single woman.

"I suppose that is a possibility."

"There are many things that a woman may do that a man may not."

"Such as?"

"Maid work." Holmes answered vaguely. "There are many places that women may go where men are not allowed." This time I caught the undertone.

"Mr. Holmes, are you offering me a place in your Corps of Irregulars?" I nearly laughed at the idea. For the second time, I had fallen into this man's life.

"As I said, a woman may say and do things that would be considered strange or out-of-place for a man. An inside view of a household would have been invaluable on any number of cases, and everyone expects women to gossip."

I scowled, but he was right. A man asking questions was suspicious, but a woman was just a gossip.

"I'm not willing to give up on Professor Jensen just yet." I said, putting off the moment of decision. "He managed time travel once, if only by accident. He may yet do it again. Though I don't know if it is entirely wise to encourage him."

"He does not seem to realize the repercussions his discovery will have."

"If you even suggested the possibility that someone might misuse the ability, he'd be shocked. It's strange that such an intelligent man can be so daft."

"Not at all. I have always thought that educated people can be the most extraordinarily naïve. You are set on continuing this research, then?"

"I dare say you have no immediate need for another Irregular."

"No, I do not." Was I imagining the smile twitching at his lips? "But how will Professor Jensen carry on with no laboratory, no funding and no place to live? Never mind. I can solve at least one difficultly. I'm sure that the hotel has another room."

"I seem to be quite the drain on your pocketbook."

"Worth every penny my dear." I looked sharply at him. Holmes covered his sudden confusion by searching out the cigarettes and matches. I knew Holmes' tactics too well to be put off by this. Once he had the tobacco going, I was still looking at him, more than a little shocked at the frank undertones in his voice.

Holmes: the archetypal bachelor; Holmes: the cold-blooded thinking machine; Holmes: the misogynist; Holmes flirting?

"We are nearing Victoria Station." He said unnecessarily, after a few puffs. He crushed the nearly-whole cigarette out and stood. I stood as well, and that was when the train hit the switching points.

The carriage rocked violently. I was pitched forward; Holmes half turned and I tumbled directly into his arms. Fortunately the dining compartment wasn't very large, or else we would have both tumbled to the floor. It was quite natural that he should throw an arm around my waist; steadying us both until the train stopped swaying. It was not at all strange that I should throw my arms around his neck to brace myself. It was no use at all telling myself this, because my breath quickened and I could feel his pulse quicken to match mine.

My intellect told me that this was not my husband, but my body called it a liar. I think Holmes was having the same difficulties, but for different reasons. It seemed ages, but could only have been a second or two before the internal battle could resolve itself.

Reason won out in the end, and I flung myself backwards, breaking his grip. I collided with the chair and nearly fell over, but recovered. I stammered something unintelligible even to me, and left in a rush. Fortunately, the notoriously difficult compartment doors gave me no trouble, allowing me the illusion of a graceful exit.

I put two cars between us before slumping against the wall, trying to regain my composure. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remind myself that this Holmes was _not_ my husband. But I couldn't help but wonder if it could be considered infidelity to be with your husband after you were married, but before he'd met you.

I tried to shake conundrum out of my head, rather shocked at myself, but I had the sudden image of myself sitting among a circle of my fellow students in an Oxford pub laying my dilemma before them.

•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

"Hypothetically, let us say that time travel is possible." A few chuckles, the rustle of cloth as some sit forward to hear better and other sit back, divorcing themselves from such a silly thesis. "Let us say that one travels back in time, oh, ten years or so."

"Only ten?" Someone would call. "Heavens, H.G. Wells had the ambition to travel thousands of years."

"And in travelling back in time, you meet your future spouse. You know that you will one day marry this person, but they do not. In fact, they have not met you yet."

"Why not travel back fifty years and accidentally prevent yourself from being born?" Another wag would call. I ignore the academic heckling and plunge forward to my key point.

"If you were to fall into bed with this person, would that be considered infidelity?" I lean back, satisfied that I have finally reached the crux of my hypothesis and listen to the silence while the others rally classical quotations, theological writings on marriage, and the new theories of physics in order to defend their positions. The ifs and the buts and the conditional clauses roll over the table like waves in a storm. Points and counterpoints chase each other around the table until the "Yes" and "No" and "What a daft question" camps are firmly entrenched in their positions.

And no doubt the whole thing would collapse in laughter with a delightfully crude observation from one of the neutral parties.

•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•.

Theories of metaphysics often cropped up in my chosen field of theology, but to be personally mired in a conundrum rather blunted its appeal. I found myself standing outside our compartment, and took myself inside before a conductor came along to ask me my business.

Jensen had fallen asleep, lulled by the rocking motion of the train, and his notes had spilled on the floor. Holmes was not back yet, and I wondered if he would be coming back at all. I gathered up Jensen's notes and leafed through them, not really looking at the writing on the page.

Despite Holmes' general indifference towards the social norms of his generation, it was still terribly improper for an unmarried man to embrace a married woman in public. And I knew, though I would never admit it, I could have kept my balance perfectly well without falling into Holmes.

Oh Lord. He probably knew it as well as I. What he think of me now?

But then, he didn't have to hold me quite so tightly either.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	13. On More Train Stations

**_Chapter Twelve_**

**_On More Train Stations_**

Thankfully we were not as far from Victoria Station as I had thought. Holmes returned to the compartment not long after me, slamming the door to wake Jensen. His presences saved us from having to make any allusion to the incident in the dining car, although he probably would not have made an allusion in any case. Holmes tended to avoid conversations bearing on matters of the heart.

Holmes' manner toward me abruptly turned cold, with him almost ignoring my presence. I knew that this was merely a cover for his embarrassment at having so completely breached the normal rules of decorum and I was thankful for it. Another man might have tried to explain or apologise, but Holmes' reaction allowed us to act as if nothing had occurred.

Jensen had proclaimed himself quite happy to be stuffed in a hotel room and allowed to work on his equations in peace. I reflected that some days it would be a joy to have such a focused mind.

The crowds in the station had abated somewhat, as the evening commute was coming to an end, but I still didn't see the Irregular until he nearly ran over us. As we stepped out to the street, a patchwork blur came within inches of knocking Jensen into the gutter and skidded to a stop a few feet beyond us.

"Mr. 'Olmes!" The Irregular cried breathlessly, jumping excitedly from one foot to the other. He looked about six, and was probably about eight. His clothes were so heavily patched I doubted that the original fabric constituted a major part of the garment. Holmes held up a hand and the Irregular stopped jumping around and stood stock still, quivering like an excited lap dog.

"Sauvignon?" Holmes asked.

"We found 'im sir," The boy squeaked excitedly, delivering his report with short gasps for breath at the conjunctions. "We found 'im in a old pub down near Market Lane and Billy and Bobby and Mikey and Stiggins are all there watching the pub sir, to make sure 'e don't scarper off and they's another man in the pub with 'im and they's talkin' but we can hear nothing cause the walls are thick and Stiggins said that you would want us to watch 'im not listen to him and Bobby said that you'd rather hear what they was planning but Stiggins knocked Bobby upside the head so he won and they sent me to tell you everything and Mr. Geiss who owns the bakery on the corner says 'e thought 'e saw a gun." The Irregular delivered this last pronouncement with an expression of awe,

"Damn." Holmes said. "You are Andrews , yes?"

"Yessir." The boy beamed.

"Take Miss Russell and Mr. Jensen back to the hotel, then…"

"Professor Jensen." Jensen sniffed.

"Wait just a moment." I interrupted. "Aren't you going to call the Yard?" His incredulous look told me all I needed to know.

"If I call in the Yard," Holmes said with heavy sarcasm, "Sauvignon will have ample time to, ah, scarper."

"I'm going with you."

"You are not."

"You said needed another Irregular. Do you intend to capture an armed man without any back up?"

"I asked if you would be willing to help with information gathering. This is different. It may be dangerous."

"Too dangerous for a woman, but not too dangerous for children?" Andrews protested that he wasn't a child, but we both ignored him.

"That is different. They are merely lookouts. They know enough to get out of the way of danger."

"Whereas I fling myself in front of moving cars at every opportunity."

"Miss Russell, I do not have time to argue with you."

"Well then, Mr. Holmes, we'd better get moving."

Holmes opened his mouth for another rebuttal, but gave it over as a lost cause. He swore quite badly under his breath. "Fine. Do not get in his way. You are to observe. Nothing more."

I would have normally voiced a sarcastic rejoinder, but I sensed that it was the wrong time. Andrews and Professor Jensen listened to this exchange with interest. Andrews started to protest about being left to take care of Jensen, but one looks at Holmes' face convinced him to give it up. I handed the hotel keys over to Jensen with an enjoinder to remain in the room until we returned. Jensen took the keys without a fuss and as Holmes hailed a cab I heard Jensen peremptorily order Andrews to lead the way.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	14. On Minor Resolution

**_Chapter Thirteen_**

**_On Minor Resolution _**

It probably would have been wiser to leave the whole thing to Holmes. Logic dictated that no permanent damage could occur, since he was due to meet me on the Downs some thirty years hence, but ever since this whole time travel business had started I had begun to feel logic could only be tenuously applied to the situation. I had already changed things by causing Sauvignon to be run to ground three years ahead of schedule. And if that could be changed, then anything could happen.

At least, that was how I rationalized it to myself as I walked along in Holmes' wake. It would be far too obvious to arrive in that infamously dubious section of town in a cab, so the cabman had dropped us some blocks away from our intended target.

In truth, I was so used to watching my husband's back that it was second nature. But I was also accustomed to him doing the same for me. This Holmes was unused to working with anyone but Watson, and even the good doctor rarely played a major role. This was going to be a difficult relationship.

I blinked and suddenly Holmes was no longer in front of me. As I was passing the entrance to an alleyway, a hand shot out and grabbed me by the elbow. I bit my tongue on a cutting remark about unnecessary melodrama and settled for a glare, which Holmes, of course, ignored. The alley was inhabited by two Irregulars, Stiggins and the diminutive Mikey.

"Stiggins." Stiggins looked from Holmes to me, puzzled by my appearance.

"Billy 'n' Bobby are watching the back door." Stiggins reported. "The one bloke left awhile ago, but the one you send us to look for is still 'ere. He didn't look too 'appy."

"Sauvignon or his visitor?" Holmes asked.

"Both. Looked like they got in a fight about summat."

"The gun?"

"The other bloke took it with 'im. Savin- Sauvig- The French bloke just keeps pacing around inside, like 'e's waitin' for somebody."

"Or trying to decide what to do." Mikey added, anxious not to be left out of the conversation.

"Only two doors and no windows that could be used as an escape route." Holmes muttered to himself, surveying the building across the street. The pub had clearly seen better days. The sign of The Drunken Sailor was so weather-beaten as to be illegible. The heavily mended curtains were shut, but light leaked through at the seams. It was difficult to tell from across the road, but the pub seemed nearly empty.

"How many people besides Sauvignon?"

"Just the publican."

"Right. I suppose I do not have to tell you if Sauvignon bolts you are to stay out of his way." Holmes was looking at the two boys, but I could sense his words were directed at me.

"No fear, guv'nor."

I nodded. I was not particularly keen to do battle with a fleeing villain, especially in these skirts. Holmes gave me an appraising look, then shrugged minutely and strolled across the street. Despite the reasonably fine cut of his clothing, he managed to blend perfectly with the handful of day labourers on their way home. Most of the respectable citizens of the area were home at the dinner tables, and the less respectable crowd had yet to appear, leaving the streets relatively quiet.

"Missus?"

"Yes Mikey?" I watched Holmes slouch into the pub and turned my gaze to the Irregular. He looked to be on the verge of a question, but thought better of it.

"Nuffin'." He muttered, turning red and staring at the pavement. I had a pretty good idea what his question was going to be about and so did Stiggins. The older boy favoured me with a cheeky grin.

"Stiggins, do you know that it is possible for a man and a woman to spend time together without becoming romantically involved?"

"Sure, missus." I sighed.

"Let me put it this way. Could you see Holmes getting involved with a client?"

"No." Stiggins admitted.

"Then I'll thank you to keep your ideas to yourself. Anyway, aren't you a little young to know about girls?" Stiggins shrugged. Mikey looked from me to him, baffled by our cryptic dialogue.

Watson often described stakeouts in the terms of a hunter waiting for his prey, and he more or less hit the nail on the head. It was annoyingly tedious to be sheltered in an alleyway, knowing that at any moment a wild animal may burst from cover, unable to relax for fear of losing the advantage. We were probably only standing there for five minutes, but it felt like an aeon.

The spring sun was beginning to disappear below the horizon, casting chilly shadows over the streets. The weird contrast of sun and shadow made it difficult to see, but there was definitely someone in the pub across the street. The flickering glow of a lantern lit the front windows, casting weird shadows against the curtains.

"Not a bright spark, is he missus?" Stiggins said, in the manner of one professional to another.

"Whaddya mean Stig?" Mikey asked.

"Hangin' about in public like this when 'e's got a warrant on 'is 'ead. Smart thing to do 'uld be to stay locked up for a few days til folks forget 'bout 'im." Stiggins clucked disapprovingly. "What if a bobby dropped in for a pint and recognized 'im?"

"Sauvignon is a con artist." I reminded him. "I'm sure he could talk his way out of it." Stiggins sniffed disdainfully. He might have said something more, but a cry and a loud crash from inside the pub. The lights went out instantly.

A lanky man with thinning black hair, presumably Monsieur Sauvignon, burst out of the front door, tripped over the threshold, nearly rolled into the gutter, recovered himself in time and dashed headlong across the street, aimed directly for us. I doubt he registered our presence through his blind panic, but it would be hard to miss us if he collided with one of us.

Stiggins had enough sense to flatten himself against the wall, but Mikey stood in the middle of the narrow alley, watching Sauvignon's flight as if it was a piece of street theatre. I grabbed Mikey by the collar and half-dragged, half-tossed him into a recessed doorway. I followed just in time to avoid being flattened by Sauvignon.

Stiggins dashed out into the street, waving his arms and trying to attract Holmes' attention. Holmes glanced at Stiggins, then dashed off down the road in another direction.

"He's goin' the wrong way, missus."

"He knows what he's doing." Probably, I added silently. Holmes had a complete map of London stored within his brain; no doubt he knew a few shortcuts.

"Stay put, both of you, and make sure he doesn't double back."

"Yessum!" Mikey called after me as I jogged after Sauvignon. The familiar thrill of the chase reduced the world to three parts, the chased, the chaser and everything else. The labyrinthine alleyways were not the best place pursue a suspect into. It was the perfect place to lay an ambush, with unexpected corners and accidental courtyards. Thankfully, there were no stray residents or thugs.

Sauvignon never once glanced behind him. Despite his initial burst of speed, Sauvignon was moving fairly slowly, the lifestyle of a dissipated French noble being ill-suited toward physical health. I could trot along behind him with a minimum of effort, keeping to my mandate of observing without interfering.

An obstacle presented itself in the form of a small square courtyard, filled with the sad remains of a flower garden and the bare skeleton of a plane tree. The only entrance was the way we had just came, with the far entrance being blocked by a six foot wooden fence.

I expected Sauvignon to turn back and attempt another route. But someone had thoughtfully left an old step ladder propped against the fence, along with several rusting garden tools. With the aid of the ladder, Sauvignon, huffing and puffing for breath, scrambled over the fence, ripping his trousers on the point of the fence post. I hung back, watching and feeling rather foolishly like I had stumbled into a vaudeville act.

I could have captured Sauvignon at any time, I thought with some exasperation. If I hadn't been preoccupied with getting Mikey out of the way, I could have knocked him down at the entrance to the alley and saved everyone concerned a great deal of running. Damn this Holmes and his misogynistic ways. I vowed that when I saw my Holmes again, I would never again complain of unnecessary chivalry. Or at least, not very loudly.

I climbed the step ladder, peered over the fence and looked directly into the startled, moustachioed face of Sauvignon.

I confess that I was badly startled, but not nearly as startled as Sauvignon. He reeled backwards, falling in a heap on the far side of the fence. Holmes was waiting with his handcuffs, which he promptly applied to Sauvignon's wrists. I finally got a clear glimpse of the suspect, and a more perfect example of the stereotypical dissipated Frenchman could not be found. He even showed signs of smoking his cigarettes in an enamel holder. Once he was safely tied up, Holmes gave me an appraising look.

"Do all women of your time act in this manner?" He asked with equal parts exasperation and amusement.

"Probably not." I admitted. "But we are no generation of fainting violets. Turn around so I can get over this fence with at least a pretence of modesty."

I managed to scramble over the fence with modesty and skirts intact. Two Irregulars were guarding the entrance to the alley patiently, no doubt the aforementioned Billy and Bobby, who were close enough to identical twins as to make no difference. One was dispatched to find the beat constable and the other to retrieve his comrades-in-arms two blocks away.

Sauvignon was babbling in a broken mixture of French and English. He bribed, pleaded, threatened and cajoled by turns, promising all sorts of unlikely things in exchange for his release. Holmes ignored him completely and I followed his example

"I seem to recall ordering you to stay behind."

"You _told_ me," I said, with heavy emphasis, "to observe. Sauvignon might have ducked down any number of side alleyways while you were looping around to get ahead of him."

"Except that there are no side turnings on that particular pit of alley."

"I noticed. But how was I to know that?" I said reasonably. "Incidentally, where is he really from?" I nodded my head at the prisoner, who was sitting on the pavement, looking more dejected by the moment. Sauvignon, realizing that his pleas were ineffective, had settled into a low grade muttering

"Where do you think he is from?"

"I would say Manchester, or maybe Leeds. Definitely Midlands though."

"Born in Swindon and educated in Leeds. Isn't that right, Harry Plinge?"

Sauvignon, aka Plinge, jumped and muttered something along the lines of "Not saying nuffin'."

"I suppose you're going to attribute this knowledge to your, ah, previous experience?" Holmes asked, carefully avoiding the words "time travel."

"No, actually. I just listened to his accent. It's not really my area of expertise, but I can at lest tell a native speaker from a foreign one."

Scotland Yard in the person of PC Williamson arrived on the scene, with Billy (or Bobby) hopping excitedly in front of him. When he heard the name Sherlock Holmes, it was all the constable could do to keep from removing his hat in the presence of Caesar. Cabs were summoned; one to take me back to the hotel and one to convey Holmes, Sauvignon and the constable back to the nearest police station.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	15. On Small Battles

**_Chapter Fourteen_**

**_On Small Battles_**

Andrews, displaying the keen instinct for opportunity that characterized the Irregulars, had ordered a huge supper and promptly set about demolishing it. I found him and Jensen in the hotel room; the professor in scribbling on a long sheet of equations and the boy halfway through a large piece of cake. Jensen didn't acknowledge my entrance, but Andrews waved and sprayed crumbs across the table.

"Don't talk with you mouth full," I admonished him, only half joking.

"Sorry missus."

"I suppose you realize that Mr. Holmes will want to know why this food is being charged to the room." Andrews shrugged unconcernedly.

"The pro-fess-or said he wanted coffee." He said, pronouncing the syllables with care.

"You don't think you may have overstepped your mandate in obtaining sustenance?"

"Mfft?" Andrews asked through another mouthful of cake.

"Never mind." There was indeed a silver coffee pot sitting half-empty among the dishes. I helped myself to a cup and decided that I could permit myself a slice of the cake as well. Jensen acknowledged my entrance with a brief, annoyed glance before turning back to his work. His wife must have the patience of a saint, I thought idly.

Holmes was likely to be some time at the police station. Watson never bothered with the details of the aftermath of a case. For one thing, police procedures and depositions make for very tedious reading. For another, Watson had once confided to me that it was always best to end on a strong note -- Justice Victorious and all that. It was one of the many points of dispute between him and Holmes, although Watson's stories could be considered one huge point of dispute.

I formulated a plan of action over the coffee and took myself down to the lobby to negotiate another room for Jensen and walked directly into a multi-lingual dispute over reservations.

A French family consisting of a father, mother, young daughter and a toddler was facing off against an Italian family with twin sons, an older girl and a babe in arms. The men were yelling at the clerks, the women were yelling at their men and the children were just yelling. Despite the clerks' best efforts to the contrary; the argument had attracted the attention of the entire lobby and threatened to break into outright violence in a few moments.

I carefully edged around the battle and tried to attract the attention of the manager.

"Excuse me!" I yelled for the third time. The manager finally heard me and whirled around with a desperate gleam in his eye.

"Are you the translator?" He cried, and continued without waiting for a response. "Thank you for coming on such short notice. The gentleman we usually contact is unavailable. I'm afraid none of them have enough English to make themselves clear."

I was about to protest that I was not a translator when a sudden thought occurred to me. A female translator might be an oddity, but it was an acceptably genteel position, and would be a very useful occupation for an Irregular. At the very least I could use the pocket money.

My French was better than my Italian, so I attacked from that front first. The situation seemed to have progressed beyond a simple "Excusez-moi?" so I jumped in without preamble, steamrollering over the French gentleman's protestations by repeating the desk clerk's reassurances in French. The Babel slowly ceased as the two families realized help had arrived, except for the infant who had just hit his stride and refused to be soothed.

The matter of the hotel rooms was quickly settled once communication could be established, to the intense relief of the hotel manager. I believe I could have asked for best suite in the hotel and received it _gratis_. I curbed the impulse and secured the room next door to mine for Jensen. The manager also insisted on paying me the customary interpreter's fee. I protested, but not too strongly. It seemed oddly amusing that a woman with nearly a million pounds gathering dust in a bank vault somewhere should be so glad to lay her hands on a half-sovereign.

"You handled that very well." A voice behind me said. Holmes had tried to sneak up on me, but I had sensed his approach.

"Not terribly difficult. When did you come in?"

"When the good signora started to wail about the injustice of the British hostelry system after one of the clerks refused her bribe. A sensible move on the lad's part, I thought."

"Especially since he probably didn't understand a word of it. When were you planning on intervening?"

"A proper English gentleman never demeans himself so far as to get involved with a stranger's business."

"To say nothing of the entertainment value." Holmes had no reply to that, but I saw a smile twitching at his lips.

"I would venture to guess you have not eaten since luncheon. Would you care to join me for supper?"

"I can evict Jensen from my suite any time. That street brat of yours took the liberty of ordering supper for Jensen, then eating most of it himself."

"The Irregulars do have a remarkably keen instinct when it comes to finding free food. We shall have to fend for ourselves then. Do you have any particular preference?"

"My knowledge is somewhat out of date, I'm afraid." Holmes raised a curious eyebrow. Either he had forgotten my claims of being a time traveller, or he was surprised that I noticed the trap he was laying. I doubted the former.

"I don't know if it has survived the ravages of time and new management, but perhaps you've heard of a little place called Simpson's."

He could not have picked a place better calculated to throw me off my stride. Simpson's was _the_ place to eat in London, both now and in later days. It was also one of Holmes' favourite restaurants. We had gone there together countless times. Holmes had remarked more than once how the place appeared to remain unchanged through the years, right down to busboys.

"No!" I said forcefully. "That is, I've heard of it and I know it's very good but I would really rather not, and anyway I don't have a thing decent enough to wear in any case." I forced myself to stop babbling with an effort. My sartorial complaint was valid enough, at least. I could be seen in public without causing a fuss, but Simpson's standards were high. I might have been more believable, if only I could have kept the shakiness from my voice.

"Not Simpson's."

"Very well then." Holmes said, deducing the source of my sudden distress, if not the actual cause.

We went instead to a restaurant located in the lobby of a large hotel not far from Hyde Park. The hotel itself seemed of dubious quality, but the restaurant was excellent. Conversation was kept firmly to the inessentials, like the details of Sauvignon's escapades through middle class society. It was a blessedly mundane end to a frenetic and confusing day.

I hoped that it wouldn't always take me like this; the sharp, sudden realization that my Holmes was gone, and in his place there was only a stranger.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Gah. Okay, so I didn't mean to wait that long between updates, but you know how it goes.

I've made some minor edits to the first few chapters to fix some errors spotted by the wonderful Maer aka "Merely a whim." She is not responsible for any errors which remain through authorial misunderstanding or sheer bloodymindedness. )

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	16. On Stakeout

**_Chapter Fifteen_**

**_On Stakeout_**

More often than not, Holmes' stakeouts had to be conducted in some cramped, uncomfortable or horribly filthy space. Slouching comfortably on a park bench in the late spring sun with a book in my hands was definitely one of his better efforts.

Jensen's attempt to reverse his experiment was only in the beginning research stages. Formulae had to be composed and theorems tested before any work with the chemicals began.

It had been only two days since we had retrieved Professor Jensen from the madhouse and already I was contemplating homicide. Aside from his culpability in starting this temporal tangle, he was the most infuriating lab partner I had ever been cursed with. He guarded his notes with the ferocity of a mother bear and would only permit me to do the most basic work. The only thing to be said in his defence was that he didn't mistrust my abilities because I was a woman, but because I wasn't him.

So when Stiggins arrived, bearing a telegram from Holmes, saying that I should meet him at a particular bench in Hyde Park near the London Zoo, I was glad to have an excuse to make an escape.

Normally, an unescorted woman with no children under her care would be a subject of some interest. I dressed very carefully, in the plainest of the governess outfits, with my long hair pulled back into a severe bun. I also moved my wedding band from my right hand to the more customary position on the left, to prevent any potential misunderstandings.

Holmes was not there when I arrived at the designated location, of course. I occasionally thought that he might show up when and where he was expected, just for novelty's sake. I had brought "Great Expectations" from the hotel with me. I had finished the book yesterday, but it gave me something to do while I waited, and if challenged I could produce a sensible opinion on the text.

Someone stepped in front of me, casting their shadow over my book.

"Afternoon, missus. Mind if I share your bench?"

"Not at all Holmes. You appear to have been working all day, considering the quantity of mud on your boots."

Holmes made a surprised noise and I looked up. In addition to the sturdy work boots bearing a considerable quantity of garden soil, Holmes was wearing a sturdy tweed suit, with more dirt ground into the knees, and a shabby, dull red cap.

The groundskeeper shuffled over to the bench and slumped down on the furthest point possible from me. I returned my gaze to the book and stared at the words without seeing them.

"You saw me coming?" He asked after a moment. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He was gazing across the park at a number of ducks that had congregated at the edge of the lake in hopes of a handout.

"No. A groundskeeper would have taken one of the empty benches. And you did ask me to meet you here."

"So I did. I take it Jensen has had no success?"

"None at all. And in any case, the whole thing was an accident in the first place. Reversing it is like trying to make a mistake on purpose."

"Counterintuitive. So you do have time for a stakeout then?"

"I've nothing else to do."

"Do you see the gentleman near the lake?"

"Feeding the ducks?"

"No, further on, carrying the walking stick."

"Ah, yes."

"Watch him and make a note of what he does, and when. When he leaves the park, try and get his cab number."

"You'll forgive my asking, but doesn't Dr. Watson generally help you with this sort of thing?"

"He does indeed, Miss Russell. But Dr. Watson's medical practice has been unexpectedly busy of late and when he is not attending to his patients, he can hardly be bothered to move from sofa to dining table."

I was surprised, though I quickly hid it, both at Holmes' echoing the phrase that Watson had once used to describe him, and his casual dismissal of Watson's vocation. I wondered if he'd done the former consciously, or if that particular adventure had not been written yet.

"I believe you dropped this, missus."

A bronze watch and a stick of graphite were deposited on the open pages of my book. I had to snatch at the pencil to keep it from rolling to the ground and when I looked up Holmes was gone.

I swore softly and adjusted my perch on the bench so I could watch the well-dressed clerk with the painfully earnest expression without appearing to do so. It wasn't that I minded being given surveillance work; after all, I had basically volunteered when I consented to become one of the Irregulars. But his aloof manner grated on my nerves. My Holmes would have never abandoned me to some menial assignment while he presumably worked miracles of deduction elsewhere.

Well, he would; but at least he would give me a better explanation.

The reality of the situation hit me with all the subtly of a steam engine. I'd lost husband and partner, home and vocation all at a single, crushing blow. I realized with a sudden start that I could do anything. It was a painful sort of freedom; the kind that comes from not having anything left to lose.

I could go anywhere. Certainly there was no reason to stay in England, and a dozen reasons to leave. Everything was familiar, but slightly off. I could not find my balance when I had to constantly remind myself this was not the Holmes I knew.

Australia or America might be worthwhile. Certainly the Colonials were more willing to respect intelligence and capability, even if it came packaged in a feminine form. There was the Continent as well. I spoke a number of European languages, and I could learn a new one fairly quickly. For that matter, I could go to the Holy Land, though that might prove tricky under the current Ottoman occupation.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly lost track of the man I was supposed to be watching. I was gazing off into space when I realized with a start that the well-dressed clerk was no longer in sight. Almost as soon as I realized this, the clerk wandered out from behind the stand of trees to stand at the water's edge. I returned to my wool gathering, relieved, but more mindful of the task at hand.

Mycroft. It was so simple. I had never asked what precisely came under the job description Mycroft so whimsically referred to as "accounting", but I could draw my own conclusions. Mycroft had ears everywhere, and no few of those must be female ears. He shared his younger brother's disdain for the feminine sex, but he also had far greater respect for their abilities as operatives. A talent for languages and a theology degree made me basically unemployable for most regular jobs; but as one of Mycroft's clerks, I could be very useful.

The only difficulty would be planting the idea in Holmes' mind without him noticing that I had done so. Mycroft was not known to anyone outside of a select circle of people, and it wouldn't do to know more than I should. On the other hand, as I was from the future, it might support my case to know about things that I couldn't possibly know otherwise.

Damn and blast. Time travel would never catch on. It was far too much of a headache.

The clerk was joined at the lake's edge by a rather more expensively dressed gentleman. I would have said he was a lawyer or a banker, but I couldn't tell with any certainty, given the distance between us. The banker wore the very latest in London fashion, including a sleek black top hat and black cane with a silver knob. His whole demeanour suggested the word "smooth", although I was aware of "slimy" intruding on the edges of the thought. The clerk seemed to treat the new man with a great deal of deference.

Their conversation was brief, but I noted the time down and recorded everything I could think of, including my speculations on the men's respective professions and a sartorial critique. I had to make my shorthand notes on the flyleaf of "Expectations", since Holmes had neglected to supply paper with the pencil. However, I wrote very lightly so I could erase the marks later.

The two men moved toward the taxi ranks. I closed my book and followed sedately, admiring the scenery around me. The banker stepped into the first cab, which appeared to be waiting for him. I remembered the bronze watch, which I had purposely left behind, and went to retrieve it, returning in time to see the clerk hop into a second cab.

I hailed a cab, taking the third one which presented itself, and directed the driver back to the hotel.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review! (Seriously. I see you people on the hit counter, all scurrying away without leaving a review.)

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	17. On Confrontations

**_Chapter Sixteen_**

**_On Confrontations_**

I was half-heartedly translating my shorthand notes from the margin of "Expectations" when Holmes tapped on the door once and entered unceremoniously. At some point during the afternoon, he had made the transition to cab driver, judging from the heavy coat he tossed on the hat rack by the door.

"You have the information, I see." Holmes said picking up the book and glancing at the flyleaf. It was an effort not to chuckle at the look of astonishment when he realized that it was no ordinary shorthand. I had found the ordinary styles of shorthand inadequate and developed my own system, incorporating nearly ten languages as well as symbols mathematical and chemical.

"How many languages are here?" He asked.

"Seven or eight. It depends on what I was recording. By the way, what was I recording?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I don't know how you are accustomed to doing things, _Mister_ Holmes, but I do not follow blindly where I am led. I spent half my afternoon in that park, watching that man do absolutely nothing and I think that the very least you could do is offer me a brief explanation as to why."

"He is an informant." Holmes replied absently, closely examining my notes and comparing them with the half-complete longhand translation. "Not one of mine. Someone else's."

"Whose?" I prompted, but Holmes appeared not to hear.

"Where did you learn this?"

"I made it up. Whose informant?"

"Very ingenious." He said. I sighed and gave it up.

"Thank you. Languages seem to be the only useful skill I have now."

"How many do you speak?"

"Fluently? Besides English, I speak Hebrew, Arabic, German, Italian and French. I can get along in Spanish, Greek and Latin; though there's hardly any call for the last two outside of Oxford."

"Useful, nonetheless." Holmes said, half to himself. Inside, I could have jumped for joy. The notion had been successfully planted in his mind without any mention of Mycroft or his dealings with the Home Office. "Where did you learn all those languages?"

"I travel quite a bit, and I have a good ear." I shrugged. Holmes' expression abruptly shifted into something that was carefully neutral. Blast. Perhaps I had been a bit too casual.

"Where have your travels taken you?" Holmes asked, nonchalant. Damn. He had caught on. Ah well, it couldn't hurt to try the direct approach.

"Europe, mostly. Working for Mycroft tends to take one to all sorts of out of the way corners of the world."

I sat back to watch the reaction my bombshell set off. Holmes froze in the act of handing my notes back to me. I met his piercing grey eyes without flinching; but without many years of verbal sparring behind me, I would have wilted like a daisy in the sun.

"Who are you?" He said in a low, dangerous voice. "How do you know Mycroft?"

"Mary Russell. I study at Oxford." I reminded him wearily. "I've met your brother. Or I will, thirty years from now."

It didn't take long for Holmes to reach the logical conclusion.

"Which means, assuming that I am still on speaking terms with my dear brother, that you have met me?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't think to mention this when we first met?"

"It would have been…awkward." I finished lamely. "What would you have thought if some strange female suddenly appeared, claiming to be… an acquaintance that you hadn't met yet?"

"I would have thought her mad." Holmes admitted, relaxing a bit. He placed the book and notes on the table and walked over to the window. I waited, and when nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, I returned to my longhand. I had finished copying the notes and was carefully erasing the pencil marks from "Expectations" when Holmes spoke again.

"I suppose it would be useless to ask you about future events. Or past events from your perspective."

"Yes." I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "I've no idea how this time travel thing is supposed to work. I could change history for the better, or I could accidentally destroy everything. Or perhaps no matter what I do, the future is set."

I chuckled bitterly.

"What?"

"I have a practical laboratory for testing the nature of causality and free will, and I'm too afraid of causing a disaster to do anything."

Holmes didn't reply. Really, there wasn't anything to say.

"Would you like to meet Mycroft? Again, I mean." Holmes asked, after a while. "Perhaps he can arrange something suitable for your talents."

"Perhaps. I don't want to give up on a way to return to my time just yet." I cast a glance at the wall between my suite and Jensen's. "He may be impossible to work with, but he is still my best hope for getting home. Our best hope." I amended.

"Do let me know if you change your mind." Holmes said, snatching up his coat and the notes in a sudden swirl of activity. "The Irregulars will know where to find me."

"I'll give Jensen another week." I said. And as the door closed, I heard Holmes murmur, though I was quite sure he didn't mean for me to hear;

"Reduced to finding employment for lost young ladies."

I could have shoved those patronizing words down his throat, but for the smile on his face when he said it.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Wow, I should berate you people more often about leaving reviews. It gets results. )

And if the only complaint that I get is there isn't enough to a chapter, then I think I'm doing all right. I would promise more soon, but I would undoubtedly have to break my word. I'm such a terrible tease.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	18. On Sudden Shifts in Equilibrium

**_Chapter Seventeen_**

**_On Sudden Shifts in Equilibrium_**

_H -_

_Jensen is gone. I think he may have returned home. Come immediately._

_-R_

My hand shook as I wrote the note. I'd returned from a restless stroll around the block, three days after the stakeout at the park, only to find Jensen missing and his notes spread across the room in a state of disarray which indicated either a struggle or a fit of frustration.

Though official surveillance of the hotel had been lifted, there were usually three or four Irregulars loitering outside the door. It appeared that this hotel was a regular haunt for the gang, since there was ready employment to be had running errands and messages for hotel guests, and plenty of pedestrians to beg pennies from.

I dashed downstairs and hailed one of the boys. They knew me by sight by now, and I suspected their interest was as much pure curiosity as professional courtesy.

I could not bring myself to go to Baker Street in person. Baker Street belonged to Holmes and Watson and Mrs. Hudson; I didn't belong there any more than I belonged in the 19th century.

Holmes had actually invited me there on one occasion and my vehement refusal startled him. I explained that I should feel very foolish and out of place, without elaborating on why. Holmes accepted my excuse without comment and no doubt deduced his own explanation. I wondered how close he came to the truth.

The note safely dispatched to Baker Street, I returned to my hotel room. I felt like one of the caged lionesses at the London Zoo. I could not stop pacing the confines of my room nor could I settle to a task. I left Jensen's room as I had found it for Holmes to examine. I doubted there was any telling evidence there, but I was reluctant to trust myself, given the state of my nerves.

But, Jensen _was_ gone. The door was locked. I had picked it after I got no answer from Jensen. Jensen's room key lay in plain sight on the table. He had no access to chemicals, so he could not have attempted to reverse his experiment.

I could only think of one conclusion. Whatever Jensen had done had reversed itself. Which meant whatever I had done would also reverse itself. Perhaps.

Holmes arrived twenty minutes after I had sent the message. I half expected him to have vanished into London or the surrounding countryside on some case. I had left the door unlocked, and he entered without knocking. He had visited Jensen's room down the hall first and gathered up the scattered notes, which he tossed down on the table.

"You believe Jensen has returned to the future." He said without preamble.

"That seems to be the logical conclusion." I said. "The door was locked from the inside. What else could have happened? I know," I held up a hand to forestall his objection, "I know a lot of things _could_ have happened, but my point is Jensen is hardly likely to have left of his own accord and there's no possible reason for anyone here to wish him harm."

"True. But someone has forced the lock on the door."

"That was me. I thought Jensen might have been ignoring me."

"Ah." I groaned inwardly. Despite evidence to the contrary, Holmes continued to treat me as a helpless creature with more spirit than ability. It was hard to fault him for that; his line of work tended to bring him in contact with only two types of women, the damsel in distress and the femme fatale. A capable, independent female was beyond his experience. This Holmes either could not or would not treat me as an equal.

But it was still aggravating.

"You are right." Holmes said, only slightly grudgingly. "It is most likely that Jensen left the same way he came."

"I only hope he went back. To his proper time, I mean. Not further back." I paused, momentarily confused by the tenses.

"You read chemistry? I trust that includes equilibrium reactions."

"Of course."

"What happens when you unbalance one side of an equation?"

"Concentrations shift to restore equilibrium."

"What if we were to consider the future and the past as being on opposite sides of an equilibrium reaction?

"Then… pushing the concentration toward the past would be a temporary state" I said hesitantly, beginning to see the point of this impromptu _viva voce_.

"Which would eventually return to its equilibrium state."

"That doesn't quite make sense."

"It is not a direct analogy, I admit."

"If the reaction is reversing itself, the time between arrival and departure is probably related to the components of the reaction itself." I said, speaking carefully. "Jensen disappeared sometime between eight p.m. and eight a.m. the next morning. My experiment started at seven in the evening."

"Anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours difference." Holmes nodded. "When was the last time you saw Jensen?"

"About nine last night. And I knocked on the door at ten this morning. Although," I said, remembering with a start, "I heard a thud at about midnight. I thought it was a chair falling over."

Which meant that in another six hours or so, I would disappear in the same way. I shivered involuntarily.

"I think we should go back to Oxford." I said.

"Why?"

"I only move in time, not space. If I want to return to Oxford in my own time, I have to be there when the reaction reverses itself."

"The next train to Oxford isn't for an hour and a half." Holmes said, with a faraway look that meant he was consulting that capacious memory of his. "Time enough for lunch."

I scowled. Between the anxiety and uncertainty my stomach was tied in so many knots the very idea of food made me a bit nauseous. We ate lunch at the station café, although I mostly picked at my soup and bread. The stewed coffee that came with it had the uncharacteristic effect of soothing my nerves and I managed to relax somewhat as the train rattled toward Oxford.

Holmes was one of those all-too rare individuals who can sit in silence with another person without feeling the need to fill it with idle chatter. I stared out the window while Holmes studied Jensen's progress. There wasn't much. Without knowing precisely what he had done, it was next to impossible to reverse it. Normally, a scientist would simply repeat the experiment, but circumstances made that unfeasible as well as dangerous.

I have never advocated the destruction of knowledge, useless, dangerous or otherwise, since all knowledge may serve some greater purpose in the end. But by now I wanted nothing more than to burn those damnable notes and forget all of this. I had half a mind to do just that if I ever got back to my own time.

British Rail Service functioned with its customary efficiency, so that between delays in London and a half hour spent on a siding outside Reading, the train did not pull in to Oxford town until half seven, just as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

The university grounds were not far from the train station, but we took a circuitous route, up the banks of the Isis, so as to avoid the Proctor and his bulldogs, patrolling for wayward undergraduates. I was looking for an out of the way place. Hopefully the return journey would be just like the event which had brought me here, and I would find myself in the same place, but in the proper time.

"And if your theory is incorrect?" Holmes asked suddenly. My stomach lurched but I didn't answer. Hope is a wonderful and terrible thing.

"What if you are stuck here, or sent even further back in time?" Holmes prompted. I spun on my heels sharply and Holmes reeled backwards to avoid running into me.

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, _Mister_ Holmes." I snapped, stopping entirely by coincidence at one of the many bridges spanning the river Isis. I turned my back on him and stormed across the bridge, well aware my emotions were getting the better of me and not liking the sensation one bit. I was beginning to feel that I couldn't take the suspense any longer.

Someone must have heard my frustration. The shockwave hit me like a sudden rush of blood to the head. I felt my knees buckle and the ground rushed up to meet me.

.•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«••»¦«•´¨•..•´¨•»¦«•

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.


	19. Equilibria

**_Chapter Eighteen_**

**_Equilibria_**

I woke up with the planks of the bridge digging into my right shoulder. I groaned inwardly and rolled over, taking some of the pressure off my bad shoulder. The stars were coming out, white sparks against the dark blue velvet of the sky.

Head trauma and poetry was probably not a good combination. I suddenly became aware of another person on the bridge, leaning against the railing with the tip of his cigarette glowing like a huge orange star.

"Holmes?" The figure started and turned.

"Russ?"

I'm afraid I threw myself at him. The sudden display of emotion took him by surprise and we both nearly went over the rail and into the Isis. The cigarette was not so lucky, tracing a glowing arc over the dark water before extinguishing with a hiss. I ran my fingers through his familiar greying hair and was surprised to encounter a mortarboard on his head. I took a step backwards and realized he was in full Oxford robes, cap and gown and all.

"I thought I'd attempt to blend in with the local populace. The species _Scholastica_ _Oxfordia_ are wary of strangers in their midst."

"Holmes. Explain. What day is it?" Holmes, my own dear Holmes, knew exactly what I meant, and answered without prevarication.

"Professor Jensen appeared in a London hotel room last night, startling the life out of the newly-wedded couple who were occupying the suite and demanding to know what had been done with his notes. You've been gone ten days."

"Oh Lord."

"Quite. I happened to be in the area at the time and was able to convince the good professor that he had merely imagined the past week's events during a bout of hallucinations brought on by overwork. Lestrade mentioned, in a deeply suspicious tone, that you were on the case in Oxford, but that he had not heard from you in a week."

"What did you tell Lestrade?"

"That you had asked me to look into it for you whilst I was in London on other business."

"And Jensen believed that he had gone temporarily insane?"

"Russ, he had just arrived from a week-long holiday in another decade. It wasn't that hard to convince him."

"So it wasn't a dream. Damn."

"Pardon?"

"I was rather hoping you'd tell me that I must have been having some strange hallucination brought on by the concussion."

"It would be simpler." Holmes agreed.

"So you knew all along?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" I nearly wailed, confused and more than a little angry. I had lived and worked with this man for the better part of seven years, only to find now that he had known me all along. The foundation for out relationship was a week thirty years ago that I had not lived until now.

"Because I didn't know all along until yesterday." This simple statement stopped my inward spiral of impending hysteria.

"Because it hadn't happened yet?" I ventured.

"Yes."

"Dear God." I pressed my palms to my temple, trying to ward off the impending headache. "If the temporal paradoxes don't get us the verb tenses will."

"It was if I remembered you in London all those years ago, but I never made the connection between you and her until last week. Quite a shocking failure of logical faculties."

"Which is why you impersonated a don to wait for me here. You knew where and when I would appear again."

"I deduced it, yes."

"Your calculations must have been a little off. How many cigarettes did you smoke while you were standing here?"

"Time allowed for six. Perhaps seven." Holmes admitted with some chagrin. I sighed, but kept my wifely naggings to myself. "Incidentally, we should move before the proctor arrives and demands some awkward explanations."

I said something rude about the college proctor. Holmes chuckled.

"Nevertheless. And you seem to be ill dressed for the occasion, yet again."

I glanced down at the governess outfit and cursed softly. Sometimes I thought that we should just give it all up and go back to fig leaves and not worrying about fashion. Holmes did have a point, however, so we adjourned to my rooms in the town.

It was not until some time later, the next morning in fact, that I remembered to ask some of the less pressing questions on my mind. It was an unseasonably chilly fall morning, and I was wrapped up in the bedclothes while Holmes got the fire going.

Jensen's notes were spread out on the bed in front of me. His equations seemed to have been chasing themselves in circles. Unless Jensen managed to accidentally propel himself into the future, intentional time travel appeared to be purely retrospective.

"I can't believe you saved these for thirty years." I said. The paper was a bit yellowed, but otherwise it had fared well.

"I am surprised that they survived the trip to Sussex intact." Holmes said, with just a touch of sourness. I had heard before how a few sets of case files had disappeared during the move to Sussex. One box eventually turned up at a farmhouse down the road, and another had been purposely stolen by one of the movers with the intent of selling them off. He had been foiled by Holmes' complete and utter lack of organisation and managed to steal only a box full of loose newspaper clippings.

"It took me all day to find them." He added, straightening from the hearth.

"I've no doubt." I replied absently. "This will be interesting to try and explain." I sighed. I allowed Holmes to drag me away from my books on occasion, but I usually left notice, rather than simply disappearing.

"I believe you have been in Sussex for the past ten days. There was a sudden family emergency, which you had to tend to immediately. A Miss Stephens rang the day after you, er, left." Holmes explained to my questioning look.

"What sort of family emergency?" I asked.

"I did not elaborate. She seemed rather excited at the idea of being allowed to 'investigate a nifty mystery' with you." I winced.

"I suppose I can make up a cousin with a bad case of hypochondria. Poor Lily. She has more enthusiasm than ability."

"An enthusiastic amateur may accomplish what a disinterested professional cannot."

"Only when determination makes the difference between success and failure."

"It's strange how often that is the case."

Trading aphorisms with Holmes was like settling into a warm bath after a hard day; soothing, familiar, and oh so welcoming. No more feeling as if the world had spun off its axis; no more jolting realizations that no matter how things might appear, I was a stranger in a familiar land.

"What was your first thought when you saw me?" The question slipped out almost on accident. I half expected some glib answer, but Holmes considered the question for almost a full minute, turning his unlit pipe over in his hands.

"I was intrigued. You looked as if you were drowning, and the rescue ship had just floated into sight." I was startled by such raw emotion, but Holmes continued without noticing.

"You hid it well, but I couldn't forget that first look. I was baffled by how your attitude towards me vacillated wildly between the intimate and the stiffly formal. And then there was your story. Perfectly logical except for the impossibility of time travel. I would have followed you even if I had a more pressing case than that twit Sauvignon, if only to see what would happen next."

I chuckled softly. Curiosity, pure and simple. If I had managed a glib story about being mugged, Holmes wouldn't have given me another thought.

"And what did you think of me?" Holmes asked softly.

I looked up sharply. His back was toward me, but I caught his reflection in the windowpane. There was the faintest hint of a self-deprecatory smile on his lips, and it nearly broke my heart. Not many men had to compete with their younger self for their wife's affections; at least not directly.

"I thought you looked exactly the same."

"Russ, I am a grown man. There is no need to spare my feelings."

"Really. Your hair was darker, of course, and there were fewer lines, but that all seemed rather secondary at the time. It was very hard to remember that you weren't, er, you." I admitted.

There was another long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire. The flames found a particularly knotty section with a loud crack, and my awareness jolted back to the present.

"Who was that man that you had me spy upon in the park that day?" I asked. Holmes got a faraway look on his face and I thought for a moment that perhaps he had forgotten entirely.

"Ah." He said softly, and a peculiar look crossed his face. "The clerk worked at the Old Bailey, shuffling papers about."

"And the man he met?"

"It was Moriarty." Holmes coughed. "I was going to have one of the Irregulars do it, but they would have stood out among the middle class crowd, and I did not trust that I could disguise myself well enough to fool Moriarty."

"Moriarty?" I repeated faintly. Suddenly I was very glad that I hadn't known who I was observing. I don't know how I would have reacted to seeing the source of so many evils in person, but I believe "murderous rage" would have been near the top of the list.

It was a long time before either of us spoke again.

"What will you do with those notes?" Holmes asked at last. I glanced down at the papers scattered across the bedclothes. The sudden urge to sweep the whole pile into the hearth came over me.

The sociological, theological, historical and personal implications of time travel were endless. The sheer power of having this sort of control over the past was mind-boggling. I remembered the devastation of the War. How much greater would that devastation be if a time travellers from each side attempted to influence the outcome? The war would be breaking out before it even started.

I did not want this. I should have burned it all in that instant. But I couldn't. As powerful, as deadly, as dangerous as this knowledge was, I could not bring myself to destroy it. It seemed unlikely to me that humanity would ever be ready enough to deal with time travel in a responsible way, but I could not pass that judgement.

"I should destroy it all." I told Holmes. "But I can't. It's too important."

"Into the attic then." Holmes said, and I thought I detected a note of relief in his voice. "Along with your memoirs."

I started and, to my great annoyance, blushed. I didn't think Holmes was aware of the slowly-growing bundle of paper in one of my trunks.

"You don't mind then?"

"How could I object to another Boswell? I do seem to collect them. I hope you are not going to send them to Doyle for approval?" Holmes added, with a warning glance.

"Don't be silly, Holmes. Anyway, it's more of a journal than anything."

"Hmph. I shouldn't think you'd need to write anything down to remember it." Holmes said only slightly mollified.

"What were you doing going through my Oxford trunks anyway?"

"I was looking for that chemistry journal I leant you." Holmes replied, now on the defensive.

"I shouldn't think you'd need to read anything twice in order to remember it." I said sweetly.

"Oh very well. I was snooping. It _is_ what I do."

"So I should start putting little labels on my things: 'Don't touch. This means you Holmes'?"

"Only if you want to be very sure I'll look. Don't pretend you've never poked your nose where it doesn't belong, Russell."

"A good student learns all from her master, Holmes."

"A good student wouldn't show such cheek."

"Very well. Then I won't ask where you got that photo of me in your wallet."

The look of astonishment mingled with embarrassment was ample compensation for the past week of misery.

"Layers upon layers, Russell. Any more surprises you'd like to spring on me?"

"None at the moment, Holmes. I shall have to come up with some more."

"Please do."

**FINIS**


End file.
